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Associated Industrial Contractors2/3/2004
PUBLISHED
Defendant Fleming Engineering, Inc. ("Fleming"), a surveying company, appeals from the trial court's judgment following a bench trial in favor of plaintiff Associated Industrial Contractors, Inc. ("AIC"), a general contractor that hired defendant in connection with the construction of a building addition. It was Fleming's responsibility to perform a survey that would pinpoint the location for columns forming the framework of the addition in order to ensure that the addition's walls would be completely square. After Fleming completed the survey and AIC began construction, AIC discovered that the line of columns forming the south wall of the structure was not parallel to the north wall, but rather was skewed. The central issue at trial was whether Fleming negligently misidentified the location for the columns or whether AIC improperly placed the columns after the center points for the columns had been correctly set by Fleming. We hold that the record contains sufficient evidence to support the trial court's determination that Fleming was the negligent party.
Honda hired AIC to build an addition to the west of an existing building at its facility in Swepsonville, North Carolina. Because an overhead crane needed to travel on rails from the existing building through the addition, the new structure (approximately 80 feet wide by 120 feet long) had to be perfectly square with the main building. The plans for the addition called for ten columns, five on the north side of the addition and five on the south side. Each column was to be held in place by a base plate with anchor bolts that had been lowered into a footing. Footings already existed for the two columns closest to the main building, but the location of each of the remaining eight columns needed to be determined by surveying.
AIC decided that it needed to hire a professional surveying firm to locate the columns because the acceptable tolerances for the columns were so tight as a result of the column's base plate design and the crane running from the main building into the addition. AIC supervisors had determined that each column could be no more than one-eighth of an inch out of alignment. AIC employees did not believe that they could use conventional methods to survey the location of the columns with the necessary accuracy because there were several existing buildings closely surrounding the construction site and because constant wind interfered with their attempts to identify the column center points with a plumb bob, one of the traditional techniques. AIC concluded that a professional surveyor, using electronic devices, was needed to ensure accurate placement of the columns.
In late December 2000, AIC hired Fleming to perform the survey. Fleming surveyor Johnny Register, Jr. met with AIC construction superintendent Lanny Joyce to review the architectural plans and AIC's requirements, including the location and distance between the columns and the need to have the building precisely square.
AIC called Mr. Register as a witness and he described in detail how he performed the survey. He did not work alone, but rather brought another Fleming employee, John Davis, with him to act as his "instrument man." They worked with an electronic transit, a device equipped with a scope that has a zoom focus allowing the person operating it to see string lines on a plumb bob a "couple of hundred feet away[.]" In addition, it has an LCD screen that reports the angle that the person has rotated and distances that are being measured. Mr. Davis operated the electronic transit while Mr. Register marked with nails both the center points for the columns and offset points. According to Mr. Register, they were suppose
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