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Court opinion:
An owner wants to renovate a four-story building by adding an elevator and a library. He hires a drafter to draw up construction plans for the renovation. When the drafter is done, the owner likes the plans and wants to start construction, but the drafter informs him that permits cannot be obtained without the signature and seal of a "licensed design professional"—i. e., either an architect or an engineer.
The owner contacts a licensed architect. But he thinks that the architect's fees are too high, so he hires a licensed engineer instead. The architect complains to the state architecture board that the engineer is practicing architecture without a license.
At the proceeding before the architecture board, everybody involved concedes that the renovation involves components of both architecture and engineering. But the architect's expert witness testifies that it's 80 percent architecture and 20 percent engineering, while the engineer's expert witness testifies that it's 80 percent engineering and 20 percent architecture! The board sides with the architect, and imposes fines on the engineer (1 k$) and the drafter (300 $).
The appeals panel reverses the board's decision. If the architecture board were justified in imposing fines in this case, then the engineering board would have been justified in imposing fines on the architect if the owner had hired the architect rather than the engineer, and that would be a nonsensical catch-22. It makes much more sense to say that, if a project has substantial overlap between architecture and engineering, then either an architect or an engineer can sign and seal its plans without fear of being fined.
Note that this case is from Pennsylvania. In contrast, New Jersey eliminated this problem by specifically allocating different types of buildings exclusively to architects, exclusively to engineers, or permissively to both groups of licensed professionals. The building at issue in this case was in IBC occupancies B (business—law offices on floors 1–3) and R (residential—an apartment on floor 4), of which New Jersey assigns both exclusively to architects.
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