Seen to be Doing Right

My Resident Engineer of the condo project told me that he discovered the contractor had poured Grade 25 concrete for the drain base inside the Basement Floor during the concrete cubes testing. The contractor had earlier stated in the "Requisition Form for Inspection" prior to the pour that Grade 40 concrete would be ordered. G40 is the specified grade for the drain which is structurally connected to the basement floor slab.

The contractor claimed that he thought that the concrete grade for the internal drain is similar to the external drain which is G25. To resolve this, I insisted that the cast concrete be hacked off and recast. The contractor begged and appealed to us to consider keeping what's been cast without removal. After rechecking the design, we decided to keep what's been cast but with a very strong warning to them not to repeat again.

In fact, the contractor wanted everything to be verbal without record so that the client would not know about it. But, I decided that it must be in writing for record purpose. The other reason is that there would be cost adjustment from G40 to a lower grade of G25.

I told my RE that some may consider this to be a trivial matter and may not be known as long as it was kept within the four walls. But then one fine day, somebody may either unintentionally bring the issue out or deliberately raise it for the client's knowledge. By then, it would be too messy to explain.

Therefore, it is always better to be transparent. Not only you have to do it right, you must be seen to be doing right.