Chapter 51 - Foundations
The city building office requested additional subsurface documentation from the TriBeCa project engineer. The notice gave a response deadline and did not accuse anyone of violating a code.
Owen forwarded the public posting to me with a single line: This is how it should work.
I stood over the bookstore plans and thought about the arrogance of assuming a document could be judged from one page. Good buildings required boring systems: inspections, calculations, people willing to say a measurement was wrong.
At lunch Adrian called. “My operations director says the city wants revised groundwater materials.”
“Yes.”
“Did you contact them?”
“I submitted a professional inquiry using the public filing and my own previous correspondence. I did not accuse your company of anything.”
He sounded angry for a fraction of a second. Then he said, “I wish you'd told me first.”
“I know. That's part of why I didn't.”
He was quiet. “The engineers will answer the examiner.”
May you like
“That is their job.”
Neither of us apologized. There was nothing to apologize for. For once, we had disagreed without one of us demanding that the other's judgment disappear.
