How could the owners have imagined that the garage ramp could cause scrapes and dents on their vehicles because of a setting-out error in the width and turning radius , if the architect himself did not record it in the Construction Design?
It seems incredible that only when the homeowners’ association checks some plans commissioned from surveyors, showing a topographical survey of the garage access ramp, does it find that it is very different from the one described in the design; and the developer, with a completely straight face, puts forward as an argument “the failure to notice the problem from day one”. And if it were true that it is narrow, why didn’t you say so from day one? (says the developer)
The homeowners’ association had not had any measurement other than the one provided by the architect acting as works director; it was only after countless scrapes, dents and scratches, leaving the ramp’s paint on the bodywork of their vehicles, plus endless fiendish and tortuous manoeuvres to get in and out of the garage, that an expert was commissioned to carry out a topographical survey of the ramp, since they could never have imagined that the problems they had found were due to the ramp being narrower than it should be.
If the architect acting as works director had not himself noticed the problem (either he did not realise or did not want to realise) regarding the dimensional error in building the ramp. If the quantity surveyors acting as site managers for the works, and by extension for the garage ramp, did not pass on to him the change in the dimensions of the ramp’s central columns…
It was difficult for the homeowners’ association to understand that the width of the ramp did not comply with the Planning Regulations and they thought that the difficulty and, in some cases, the impossibility of driving along the ramp might be put down to a lack of skill on their own part, or on the part of some of the owners.
But as time goes by, they agree that the problem is widespread, and that is when they decide to commission the topographical survey, which reveals the differences in dimensions, in some cases alarming and serious.
Subsequently, as a result of the ramp not being fit for purpose, a surveying company is commissioned to set out the actual ramp, and that is when the difficulty they had been having in accessing and driving to their parking spaces is explained.
EXPLANATION: Many of the ramp’s columns have changed dimensions without explanation, and this has not been recorded in the Construction Design.
As the width between the ramp walls did not change, once the diameter of the columns changes, it is evident that it affects the width of the driving lane.
Planning Regulations are there to be complied with, since failure to comply with them means that the facilities they refer to do not work, and they speak of “minimum dimensions”; so as soon as the ramp fails to comply at one or more points and you cannot get through, the access is narrow, vehicles scrape, collide, the driver of the vehicle despairs, and the whole garage ceases to be fit for purpose.
This is a real case we handled, and it was the owners who decided to measure, check the design and sue. The case was won, and it was not that the ramp was narrow, but that someone at the last minute thought that the central columns separating the up and down lanes were insufficient and increased their diameter (they were made thicker), which left less width at those points.
The parties involved in the construction fought to the end, with the arguments already mentioned about why it took the homeowners’ association so long to notice how narrow it was; but the most childish explanation was that the ramp complied at almost every point, and was only narrow at a few (…?).
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