The firm of Diani's
Building Corp. was awarded the contract to build the Monastery
of Carmel of St. Joseph. Before Construction began, the
Nuns had insisted the contractor's plans be thoroughly gone
over and approved by a Structural Engineer.
The
contractors Architect submitted his plans to the building
department of Santa Barbara Country and got the go ahead to
start construction.
When the building
was 2/3 complete the project failed a critical inspection that
showed many structural errors. The building department warned
the contractor not to go forward "with anything that requires the
services of an architect or engineer" until given the name of a
responsible architect or engineer. The contractor fired the
Architect but give his name to the building department as the
responsible architect and hence proceeded to work on the building
without either an architect or engineer.
The contractor proceeded with the construction with defective plans in
violation of the Owner's orders. The whole building was built by
"change orders" and every part requires major retrofit which is the
reason the cost to finish became more than we had. The
building project came to a halt. See the interruption page for
more details.
