Design, Technology and Professional Competence
Competence questions test technical judgement: whether the design can be built, coordinated and maintained, and whether you know the limits of your own expertise.
Coordination is the competence test
Set a single grid and datum, then coordinate structure, services and architecture: beam depths against ceiling voids, drainage falls against slab soffits, shafts, plant rooms and maintenance access, expansion and movement joints, waterproofing at upstands and thresholds. In Sri Lanka's climate, treat solar control, cross-ventilation, driving rain, termites and coastal salt spray as design drivers, not finishes.
Performance and compliance
Fire: means of escape, compartmentation and appliance access. Accessibility: level entry, ramps, sanitary provision and lifts under disability legislation. Energy: the Sustainable Energy Authority's code for commercial buildings rewards passive measures before systems. Specify by performance only where you will verify by test; otherwise specify prescriptively. Use samples and mock-ups for anything repeated.
Limits and records
Engage and coordinate specialists - structural, geotechnical, services, quantity surveying. Visit the site at intervals appropriate to the stage, record each visit, and never certify work you have not seen. Hand over as-built information and maintenance advice.
Worked example
A client wants to delete the lift from a five-storey apartment block to save cost. Reasoning: check accessibility legislation and the approval conditions, fire evacuation requirements and the authority's likely position, and the long-term management and market consequences under the Condominium Property Act. Put the technical and legal consequences in writing, let the client decide, and record the decision. Silent compliance is the failure.
Traps
Verbal structural changes without the engineer; ceiling voids too shallow for drainage falls; no site visit records; accepting a substitution without checking equivalence and client approval.