What a seal actually means

How we work

Responsible charge is the whole point

There is a steady demand for engineers who will seal drawings prepared by somebody else, and it is a demand worth refusing. The seal is the mechanism by which the public can rely on a design, and applying one to work you neither performed nor supervised empties it of meaning — and places the liability exactly where it should not be.

Assessments carry a related honesty problem. An owner wants a clean answer, and a visual inspection cannot give one about framing nobody can see. Writing down what was not accessible is not hedging; it is the difference between a report that can be relied on and one that quietly overstates itself.

After a storm the pressure runs the other way. Owners and public adjusters both have reasons to want old damage described as new, and insurers have reasons to want the reverse. The only defensible position is to report what is observable and let the finding sit where it falls.