Interesting quote from the below linked article:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/surfside-condo-manager-repair-delays
It wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever if the e-mail had been answered within 5 minutes.
In an email a week later that went unanswered for a month, Morabito asked the city to make space for construction crews so the repairs could get started.
"It is [Champlain Tower South’s] desire to go out to bid for our 40-year recertification work ASAP and need the Town of Surfside input on this request so everyone has a clear understanding on how this project will be accomplished. As such, we respectfully request that we hear from the Town in the near future so we can make any necessary revisions to our contract drawings and submit same to the Town for permit review/approval," Morabito wrote.
As an architect, I have managed restoration projects on concrete buildings, so I know (generally) what the work entails. In this case, they hadn't even gone out to bid yet. The bidding process alone takes (typically) a month to two months. The construction documents hadn't been submitted for permit yet -- once submitted, for a project of this complexity the review isn't instantaneous. In my state, the building department is allowed thirty days -- by law -- to review construction documents, and many towns and cities have difficulty meeting that statutory deadline.
These are HUGE contracts. Contractors can't develop their bids on the back of an envelope over coffee during a break at the local diner. They put a team of estimators on the bid, they go look at the site, they make their own assessments of how much work is involved, how they will approach it, how many man-hours of labor will be required, what materials and how much will they need, and how long they think the work will take. If there are questions by ANY bidder, the questions and answers are written up and issued as an addendum to ALL bidders, so that all bidders have the same information to work from and there's a level playing field.
If a question from a bidder brings to light some problem with the proposed construction documents -- those get revised and reissued, and that usually results in the bid period being extended.
If, as I expect, the work involved chipping away damaged concrete, repairing or replacing rusted reinforcing steel, and then covering it with new concrete, that's very painstaking work when the beams or columns you're working on are holding up the entire building. The contractor is responsible for the design and erection of temporary shoring, which is needed because they're chopping away the foundations of the structure. It could easily take two weeks to a month for a structural engineer working for the contractor just to design the shoring, and it would probably take another couple of weeks to install it. Only then could the contractor chip out the first loose chunk of concrete from the first beam or column.
Bottom line, this project was NOT ready to go, and the delay in response from the building official, while not good, didn't make any difference. This building was forty years old, and it had apparently been neglected (structurally) for forty years. That's too long. In my [professional] opinion, there was no question that this building was going to collapse. It was a question of when, not if.
Here's one of the structures I managed the repairs on: Xerox Document University.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Conference_CenterIt was built in 1974. It was NOT next to the ocean, it did NOT have an underground parking garage beneath the main buildings, it did NOT have a swimming pool leaking into the basement, and we designed major structural repairs to the concrete columns in 1994 - only 20 years after it was built. The actual construction of the repairs took a couple of years -- I don't know how exactly long because I left the firm before that project was completed.
https://xeroxnostalgia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Leesburg_Trainig_Centre.jpghttps://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_FlqdF_4WRg/UUsWG52lH_I/AAAAAAAAC24/uhn4Tnl92FU/s1600/IMG_3142.JPGhttps://1.bp.blogspot.com/-890Ns5QeSxQ/UUsWJPBChrI/AAAAAAAAC3U/i-jH9RZ7Xnw/s1600/IMG_3146.JPG
