architect or engineer
 

architect or engineer???
is determining the roof slope and location of roof drains/scuppers the structural engineers responsibility or would you consider that part of the architects job?
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normally the architect's job - however, as a structural engineer i try to look out that it is properly sloped, drained, etc. just to add quality assurance to the project.
architect and mechanical engineer to determine roof drain requirements. i verify that the roof slope is a minimum 1/4" per foot for a "flat" roof. except for metal buildings, the minimum roof slope can be 1/8" per foot.
interesting how things vary depending on where you are in the world. in australia, almost all large buildings have metal roofs. it has traditionally been the architect's job to specify the roofing profile, slope, gutter sizes and details, sumps, scuppers, downpipes, etc. but the architects kept making roofs more complicated until a lot of them had leaking problems which the architects were not able to handle. thus, we now have hydraulic engineers or designers.
the slope of the roof is detemined by the architect, whether it's "flat" or something else. if the architect tells me it's a "flat" roof, i verify that the minimum slope is provided in the roof framing.
the architects often would only give general info. to their designers and would not guide or review their work. we would regularly find problems or impractical or incomplete solutions. finally, we realized that we could not rely on their solutions (for complicated roofs) and needed to become more proactive to prevent alot of wasted time among all parties. now, it is a more collabrative effort among, architect, structural engineer and plumbing engineer.
it is an architects' job. however, if their layout results in warping of the deck or varying the structural slab thicknesses, i convince the architects to revisit and revise their scheme.
thanks everyone for your responses!
j
the answer may not be so cut and dried as presented. the roof slope minimum is 1/8 in 12 except on roof decks over living space. very important area not to forget! then it is 1/4 in 12 slope minimum and can be a challenge to design your structural
the main issue for engineers is to make sure it is not a ponding hazard.
csd