Government Buildings and Projects

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mbrooke

mbrooke

Batteries Included
Location
United States
Occupation
Technician
Does the NEC have to be followed word for word in government buildings? Lets just say I know of some buildings/prints littered with technical violations like 3 sets of 500MCM fused at 1,600 amps (all feeders in the building sized to calculated load instead of OCPD), no ground fault protection on newish 4000 amp main, taps over 25 feet, unfused 3 phase transformer secondaries, MC cable for smoke purge fans, no shunt trips, life safety feeding office lights ect.

Some of them seem to be based on what appears to be technical merit around "continuity of service" vs possible fire prevention. Others seem like the bidder had no clue.

Where do government buildings and contractors stand?
 
Who’s the ahj? No one.
There are few if any rigorous Inspections.

3 kinds of work: new build by contractors under construction management; remodel by contractors managed by the entity and in-house build /maintenance.

I went all the way to the division of the state architect onetime for a safety violation here. He told me that, since Ronald Regan, it’s all cost saving, unqualified personnel and lack of pride in the work. He only gets involved in who sets the system standards? plans.
Think about it, who is the ahj?
Construction management has engineer to inspect and correct occasionally. Not much tooth to their reommendations. Big remodels managed by director of operations? he learns from the vendors. In house builds by maintenance personnel?
there are no inspections basically.
Who sets the system standards?
Who is on the citizen oversight committee o er seeing payments?
How are the jobs allocated? Lowest bidder who has proven work like this in the last 5years three bids:
$4,
$6.25 and
$1.50
Who got the job?
 
wyreman said:
Who’s the ahj? No one.
There are few if any rigorous Inspections.

3 kinds of work: new build by contractors under construction management; remodel by contractors managed by the entity and in-house build /maintenance.

I went all the way to the division of the state architect onetime for a safety violation here. He told me that, since Ronald Regan, it’s all cost saving, unqualified personnel and lack of pride in the work. He only gets involved in who sets the system standards? plans.
Think about it, who is the ahj?
Construction management has engineer to inspect and correct occasionally. Not much tooth to their reommendations. Big remodels managed by director of operations? he learns from the vendors. In house builds by maintenance personnel?
there are no inspections basically.
Who sets the system standards?
Who is on the citizen oversight committee o er seeing payments?
How are the jobs allocated? Lowest bidder who has proven work like this in the last 5years three bids:
$4,
$6.25 and
$1.50
Who got the job?
Click to expand...
The lowest qualified bidder. I've done one job for the Feds, overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers. They were hyper vigilant about code issues.
 
wyreman said:
Who’s the ahj? No one.
There are few if any rigorous Inspections.

3 kinds of work: new build by contractors under construction management; remodel by contractors managed by the entity and in-house build /maintenance.

I went all the way to the division of the state architect onetime for a safety violation here. He told me that, since Ronald Regan, it’s all cost saving, unqualified personnel and lack of pride in the work. He only gets involved in who sets the system standards? plans.
Think about it, who is the ahj?
Construction management has engineer to inspect and correct occasionally. Not much tooth to their reommendations. Big remodels managed by director of operations? he learns from the vendors. In house builds by maintenance personnel?
there are no inspections basically.
Who sets the system standards?
Who is on the citizen oversight committee o er seeing payments?
How are the jobs allocated? Lowest bidder who has proven work like this in the last 5years three bids:
$4,
$6.25 and
$1.50
Who got the job?
Click to expand...


Can the public call it out? Can the gov legally reject the NEC for building be it local, state or federal?
 
mbrooke said:
Can the public call it out? Can the gov legally reject the NEC for building be it local, state or federal?
Click to expand...
Don't know legally but I'm told by workers for school districts it happens all the time, statement that schools are overseen by the dept of ed. I haven't seen it personally, but told of things like neutral derived from seperate panel from the hot, and a single piece of equipment run from two seperate panels. They claim when told about error noting nec no correction made just told not under nec but state ed, not sure if state ed follows nec.
 
Fred B said:
Don't know legally but I'm told by workers for school districts it happens all the time, statement that schools are overseen by the dept of ed. I haven't seen it personally, but told of things like neutral derived from seperate panel from the hot, and a single piece of equipment run from two seperate panels. They claim when told about error noting nec no correction made just told not under nec but state ed, not sure if state ed follows nec.
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Yahh, thats what I'm thinking. The NEC does not apply.

Sad kids have to live with EM fields, sad.
 
At least as of ten years ago the State of New Jersey exempted themselves from NEC.

NEC is also sort of a design standard in utilities, mines, maritime, aviation. Most of them have some kind of rules or regulations that fit on one or two pages, large font, double spaced. When I worked at a mine I would just give non-mine savvy contractors the entire electrical regulation on one page.

This is free work. The way you approach it is different from a Code inspector. You should talk about the issue (hazard) and why it’s an issue.

The continuity argument is often implemented in a different way. Fire pumps for instance use oversized feeders and still have short circuit protection. They allow overloads by overbuilding instead of tripping. Make sure you aren’t just looking at this design. Also pay attention to grounding. Only solidly grounded systems need massive short circuit protection, not ungrounded or resistance grounded.

The lack of engineers is also a good/bad thing.

In more NEC forward areas I’ve heard so much horse excrement about what the Code requires vs what it says that government buildings are refreshing.
 
Hey I'm an Electrician on a government site with 20 plus years experience and I can tell you most of the work is engineer before it is put out for a bid.
Most of the time I see the problem being lack of job oversight or final inspection to make sure jobs are being done to specifications
 
mbrooke said:
Lack of engineers? You mean on projects or in general?
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They pay an engineering firm, usually civil or architectural, to draw up plans and bid specs. Generally both are physically not implementable or not Code. They write the regulations to require licensed professional engineers to do all

In fact most bid specs are written by someone that thinks they are writing a spec for a coffee maker. And the plans are written by someone that graduated with an English degree that just reads Codes and spits out pure utter garbage, So before we even get started you have to either submit questions to make them fix the spec or bid as is then change order it and help them beat the tar out of the engineers until they get it right then change order it.
 
paulengr said:
They pay an engineering firm, usually civil or architectural, to draw up plans and bid specs. Generally both are physically not implementable or not Code. They write the regulations to require licensed professional engineers to do all

In fact most bid specs are written by someone that thinks they are writing a spec for a coffee maker. And the plans are written by someone that graduated with an English degree that just reads Codes and spits out pure utter garbage, So before we even get started you have to either submit questions to make them fix the spec or bid as is then change order it and help them beat the tar out of the engineers until they get it right then change order it.
Click to expand...
I had posted this sometime back but could not find it in a search. I hope it's good for a laugh or two.

In the Beginning was The Project, and The Project had The Spec.
The Spec was with The Senior Engineer,
And The Senior Engineer saw that it was Good.
All Proper Things were in The Spec, and there was nothing
Outside The Spec that was Proper.
And The Spec said, "Thy ground ring conductor shall be 2/0,
and no size smaller shall be Proper."
And so it was, and it was Good.

It came to pass that a Junior Engineer was tasked with Another Project,
And he strove mightily against The Deadline.
In his despair, he cried out to The Senior Engineer;
"The EC's are rebellious! Lo, they clamor for Knowledge
on every detail and I am sore pressed to answer them!"
And The Senior Engineer said; "Fear not! For see, I have The Spec,
and herein shall you find what you seek."
And doubt entered the heart of The Junior Engineer, and he said;
"Is this not The Spec from another Project? Will it suffice?"
And The Senior Engineer said; "Well mayest thou calculate every
Trivial Quantity and watch thy Project Manhours flow like a river
in flood and thy Profit Margin dwindle away. Or takest thou
The Spec and brandish it before the rabble."
And The Junior Engineer said; "Meh, good enough."

And so The Spec became The Boilerplate, and was handed down
from The Senior Engineer to The Junior Engineer, and when The Junior
Engineer passed to Senior status, so did he likewise pass it to
the next generation. And so it has been, and so shall it be,
until the end of Time.
 
I worked in facilities for both the Federal Government (Army actually) and the State of NJ. You are correct in that we police our own work. However, we did mandate NEC compliance. We were sort of on hour honor as government employees, and we were the ones who oversaw any contractor work.
 
For government buildings, there is federal government (and military) or local/state government. These comments are from Washington.
For local/state the NEC applies, and permits inspections are required. Some cities, such as Seattle do their own permitting and inspections and tend to have stricter requirements than the NEC.
New and remodeled projects for schools and hospitals in WA require "plan review", where the contractor/engineer submits the plans to our state AHJ for review before the project can start.
Its interesting that most hospital electricians (in my classes) were not electricians, but operating engineers. However they were among the most knowledgeable due the strict accreditation requirements from some hospital agency


For the federal government, our state AHJ does not have jurisdiction, contractors and electricians don't have to be licensed.
I have done electrical classes at an army base, airforce base, naval station and naval air station. Most often there is no AHJ. Sometimes the military does their own electrical work (they have self help stations). the army base (JBLM) seems to require licensing and bonding for electrical work with s oversight and inpsection. Often the base electrical maintenance staff are electricians, but some may be helpers or retired military electricians.
One of our mods here, Charlie B works for the Corp of Engineers and I get the impression on the Army side they are diligent about following the NEC
 
tom baker said:
One of our mods here, Charlie B, works for the US Army Corps of Engineers and I get the impression on the Army side they are diligent about following the NEC.
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The governing rules for federal work appear in the Unified Facility Criteria (UFCs). You can find them here: https://www.wbdg.org/ffc/dod/unified-facilities-criteria-ufc. Some of them cite the NEC as a reference document.

If there is a conflict between the NEC and the UFCs, the UFCs will take precedence. If the UFCs are silent on an issue, we fall back on the NEC. We do some of our own design work, and we contract other work to architect-engineering firms. We are our own AHJ, though it is not always clear which person in which organization will have the final call.

I do a lot of work for Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM), the closest military base to my office on the south side of Seattle. Neither Washington State nor the City of Seattle codes apply. Also, we will require an A-E to sign and seal their final design documents, but we cannot require that that person be licensed in Washington State. If they have a PE in any state, that is sufficient. This is because JBLM, like other military bases, is not located in the State of Washington. Rather, it is located on federal property that happens to be surrounded by the State of Washington. The relevant issue is that the state cannot dictate to the federal government which companies and which persons we can hire to work on federal projects. I do not know if this concept applies to the licensing of electricians who work on projects at the base, but I suspect it does.
 
charlie b said:
The governing rules for federal work appear in the Unified Facility Criteria (UFCs). You can find them here: https://www.wbdg.org/ffc/dod/unified-facilities-criteria-ufc. Some of them cite the NEC as a reference document.

If there is a conflict between the NEC and the UFCs, the UFCs will take precedence. If the UFCs are silent on an issue, we fall back on the NEC. We do some of our own design work, and we contract other work to architect-engineering firms. We are our own AHJ, though it is not always clear which person in which organization will have the final call.

I do a lot of work for Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM), the closest military base to my office on the south side of Seattle. Neither Washington State nor the City of Seattle codes apply. Also, we will require an A-E to sign and seal their final design documents, but we cannot require that that person be licensed in Washington State. If they have a PE in any state, that is sufficient. This is because JBLM, like other military bases, is not located in the State of Washington. Rather, it is located on federal property that happens to be surrounded by the State of Washington. The relevant issue is that the state cannot dictate to the federal government which companies and which persons we can hire to work on federal projects. I do not know if this concept applies to the licensing of electricians who work on projects at the base, but I suspect it does.
Click to expand...

This is true of all federal facilities. There are some Codes but they rarely even get mentioned. Depending on the facility there is much more interest in how the work is done (LOTO followed, paperwork complete, security and safety protocols) but little in terms of workmanship.

In North Carolina state facilities don’t have any permitting. They do the same kind of inspection that an industrial plant does but nothing formal. Municipal may or may not do permitting. It also seems to vary depending on if they are a quasi-government authority (water and sewage) which is independent or city/county government.
 
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