The following Bridge Design Office Guidelines on QC/QA is effective immediately.

  1.   Unit supervisors need to be personally involved in projects and thoroughly check all plan sheets.
  2.   Unit supervisors are responsible and accountable for the designs and plan sheet quality.
  3.   Design unit schedule shall include adequate time for design, plan check, and specifications review.
  4.   Unit supervisors are responsible and accountable for the project deadlines.
        Unit supervisors also have the authority to refuse work, or to assign work to on-call consultants.
  5.   Final contract plans shall be checked vs. contract specifications. This practice was abandoned few years ago, but needs to be resumed.
  6.   Establish a uniform design, plan and specs check among all design units.
  7.   Designer and checker shall be assigned to each project.
  8.   All plan sheets regardless of project types (bridges, walls, joints, bearings, etc.) need to be carefully checked before the plan signature.
  9.   Elevations, dimensions, and consistency between plans shall be carefully checked as part of the plan check.
10.   Bridge Design Engineer will check plans at 90% completion stage.
11.   Bridge and Structures Engineer will not sign the Layout sheet unless all plan sheets are checked and checker name block is filled.
        Bridge and Structures Engineer may occasionally ask for plan check prints.
12.   Designer and checker calculations shall be kept available during the design and construction, and shall be archived after construction
        completed.

We have also formed a QC/QA committee under Rich Zeldenrust’s chairmanship to review our current procedure and make necessary revisions to the BDM chapter on QC/QA and plan signature policy.