Professional liability of civil engineer

Abstract

The extent of the standard of care in construction is a subjective issue. The court would deal with it on a case to case basis in respect to the circumstances of each case. It is therefore hard to draw a line and apply it generally to justify the action in question. The case-law, develop from case to case under the guidance of previous precedents, thereby has provides the flexibility in handling the infinite variety of practical problems and the capacity to keep liability in touch with prevalent expectations of conduct. This thesis is seeks to examine the nature of claim for negligence act against the civil engineer by study ten popular cases in the field. The nature of the fault would be listed out to show the most common fault to be found in the action. Generally, the finding showed that six out of ten cases were involved in the issue of site examination and were generally found in related to an omission to conduct soil investigation. Four other cases were involved in the issue of failure to advice the client, for which half of it were in fact trying to cut down the construction cost for the client. In term of design and supervision, these issues were among the least involved in the action filed. Although extensive precedents would be referred in judging the standard of care but the reinterpretation by the judges, however, would be difficult to predict on the outcome of the negligence cases. To summarize, keep abide to the normal practise without taking lightly of any procedure is a foolproof solution