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Jorge McCormack trained and practiced as a design architect, but several years back he stopped designing buildings and started diagnosing them.
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He's now a forensic architect.
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So I guess the best way to describe it is a building doctor.
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If a building is too cold, if it's too hot, if it's leaking, smells funny or making weird noises.
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They'll call a forensic architect to come in and diagnose the patient.
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And he uses that diagnosis to serve as an expert witness in lawsuits.
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That's where the forensic part of his job comes in.
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Now, we're gonna get into the weeds later of how he does all that diagnostic work, but first, a spoiler.
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The villain of these stories is often water.
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Water can lead to a lot of different problems with a building.
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It's usually the number one culprit of any type of building design defects or construction defects.
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Mold can lead to suspected organic growth, which is another way of saying mold.
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And you know, we don't like saying mold because it triggers certain legal repercussions that have to be followed if we use the word.
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So we always say suspected organic growth.
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Oh really?
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Suspected organic Organic growth, I love that.
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Suspected organic growth. We don't know it's mold because you know they they have to take it to a lab and they have to test it and verify that it's actually mold.
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But most of my cases it's usually water getting into the building somehow
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Even architectural masterpieces are not immune to the effects of water.
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You know, they have this idea that being a great designer means that physics no longer applies to you.
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You know, Falling Water is a great example.
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They call it, you know, Leaking Water because it leaks all over the place because Frank Lloyd Wright didn't pay attention to waterproofing details.
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The Guggenheim is another great example that leaks.
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You know because physics is physics.
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You can't suspend the laws of physics just because you're a starchitect.
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I'm Dan Heath, and this is what it's like to be In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession.
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A veterinarian, a floral decorator, a life insurance agent.
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We want to know what they do all day at work.
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Today we'll ask Jorge McCormack what it's like to be a forensic architect.
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We'll talk about how he uses sound to diagnose a building's problems.
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How opposing attorneys try to trip him up when he's testifying, and what happens when you discover that a building's support beams are crumbling?
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Stay with us.
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When something goes badly wrong with a building, people start pointing fingers.
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Then they call lawyers.
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And the lawyers call Jorge.
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His job is to figure out what went wrong with the building and why.
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You know, whether it's a design issue, whether the engineer didn't do the correct calculations, whether the architect didn't design per code, whether he did not meet the standard of care, whether a contractor, you know, did not follow the plans.
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You know, there's a lot of investigating that has to happen.
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And sometimes it's no one's fault.
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Sometimes it's what we call an act of God.
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About 80% of the time Jorge is hired by the defendant in a lawsuit, usually a contractor or subcontractor being sued by a building owner.
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The rest of the time he's on the other side.
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So here's an example.
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In one case there was a building owner who hired Jorge.
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There had been some issues with the interior finishes in a building, and there was a lawsuit brewing, because the owner thought maybe the contractors didn't build it properly, so Jorge came out to look around.
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And I was walking the exterior, I noticed that there was a lot of cracking on the stucco.
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And I'm like, huh, that's interesting.
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It's so, you know, stucco is like a cementitious finish.
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It's kind of like a concrete.
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Mm-hmm.
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But it always cracks, you know, especially if it's on a wood substrate, because you know, wood and concrete are two unlike materials that expand and contract at different rates, right?
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So stucco is always gonna crack.
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But there's certain amounts of cracking that's allowable, tolerable, and and normal.
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This is cracking way more.
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So I tell the client, like, hey, let's go test the stucco.
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Let's let's take some probes.
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You know, let's just cut out a little section on the wall and measure the thickness to see if it was installed per for the ASDM standard.
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We get out there, we open a hole in the wall, we look behind the wall.
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The structural columns are gone.
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The structural column like like the columns that are holding up the building basically.
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The building.
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The holding up balconies holding up buildings.
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have deteriorated to the point where it is no longer structurally viable.
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Oh man.
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And so w what does that actually look like?
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Does it look like rotted wood or what did you see?
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You can stick your finger through it and it just disintegrates.
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Oh man.
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Yeah.
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That's terrifying.
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So how come the building had not collapsed?
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You know, because there's still a lot of redundancy, especially when it comes to wood frame buildings, right?
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Okay.
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The load path goes through a lot of different areas, but what happened is there was a design and construction issue that wasn't followed, and those wall cavities were basically acting like gutters.
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And that was another clue because I wanted...
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usually when we take probes, we take like little uh circular cores.
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We come with with a bit, we drill in, we come out, and then we measure the different thicknesses of the stucco, the the OSB, the the the sheathing.
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What's OSB?
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OSB is oriented strand board.
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You know, people call it particle board.
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Oh okay.
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I'm not a big fan of it because it doesn't if it ever gets moisture, it just turns into oatmeal.
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It loses a lot of his structural uh ability.
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So I you know, I I tend to say, you know, if you're gonna build out a wood, build out a plywood.
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Yeah.
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But OSB, you know, a lot of developers like it because it meets minimum standard and uh it's cheap.
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Okay.
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But if it gets moisture, it just disintegrates.
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Like you can just grab it and pull it apart, right?
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So I I noticed that there was a peculiar issue with with some of the balcony details and some of the terraces.
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And And I said, you know, let's instead of doing the cores, let's open up a a larger hole because I want to look behind there.
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And that probably saved a lot of lives in the future because we had to come in and put emergency shoring on all the balconies.
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And this all started out from the initial investigation was some interior finishes that were not right.
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Oh man.
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So you thought it was almost like a cosmetic story in a way and it turns out to be this building is gonna fall down unless we do something.
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Yeah, we had to scramble and and get everything uh shored up.
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So we had to open up all all the walls and all the buildings.
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And yeah, it's it's still ongoing.
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When you're hired by somebody, is your job to help the side that hired you, or are you supposed to be neutral?
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We're supposed to be neutral.
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So you're only as good as your reputation, right?
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You know, and sometimes you have to deliver clients bad news, and especially attorneys, because attorneys have to figure out how they're going about their case.
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And if you just give 'em something that they want to hear, you know, they may not have the leverage or they may have a lot more exposure than what they originally thought.
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But nobody wants to pay you guys a bunch of money for a report and then have it favor the person they're up against in court.
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Like how do they mitigate that risk?
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Sometimes we will just do a verbal opinion.
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So if if they don't want a full report, which you know takes time, it takes billable hours, we can just do our site investigation.
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And a lot of times I'll start out with that.
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And you say like, hey, do you wanna me to start out with the verbal report?
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And a verbal report just it's just a phone call.
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Okay.
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And say like, hey, I think you have a lot of exposure here.
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I think your your client messed up here or your client oh, your client is free and clear.
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Do you want us to rebut the report and go move forward?
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So We we have these steps, you know, to kind of mitigate the cost.
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Oh, okay.
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So they can kinda get a a sidebar in advance before, you know, they pay you a huge fee and th they don't they don't want to be surprised at the end of that, in other words.
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So there's ways that you can kind of signal how you're feeling about the situation.
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Yeah.
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And a lot of times like the attorneys will just tell us from straight up like, hey, how big is our exposure here?
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Or how little how good is our case or how bad is our case?
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Should we just settle?
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And you know, there's been times where I'll I'll tell the attorney I'll see something on site that uh another side missed.
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And I'm like, oh, hey, you might want to settle because you have a lot of exposure here.
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So it sounds like in your role the report is like a key piece of work product.
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Like you're frequently filing official reports with clients, yeah?
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Yeah.
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That's basically my new construction drawing, you know, my new rendering, right?
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My new beautiful product, right?
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Which is funny because I went to architecture school because I don't like to read and write.
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And now I'm in a profession that's where, that's all I do.
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So read and write.
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And what does a report look like?
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I mean, is it is it five pages?
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Is it fifty pages?
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Is it a thousand pages?
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What should we envision?
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Oh, it depends on the case.
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You know, some are very simple, straightforward, and you know, if it's a big building with a lot of different issues, you know, if there's, you know, different disciplines, if there's a cost component to it.
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You know, we we have cost estimations to have a number to ask for or to rebut someone else's number if they're saying, like, hey, you you owe us X amount of money for all of the construction defects.
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We can, you know, do our own analysis and say, no, we disagree with that number.
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This is what the number is.
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But the thing about the reports...
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Architects on the design side tend to be very romantic about our use of language when we talk about buildings.
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You know, we we use a lot of poetic language, you know, like uh creating a moment, creating you know, creating space that, you know you know, generates a feeling.
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Mm-hmm.
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Forensic architecture is the complete opposite.
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It's almost like you're divorcing somebody.
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You're not courting anybody.
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You're divorcing somebody, right?
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Because you...
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And you have to be careful.
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You have to write in a certain way where you're not using, you know, absolutes.
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You know, you're not using flowery language.
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You're not saying, like, for example, "This was an egregious violation of the building code." Well what make something "egregious" or what is a "minor" violation of the building code?
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It's either yes or no.
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It's either violating the building code or not violating the building code.
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So it's very factual, very simple.
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It it's almost like when you see police officers testify on like TV uh uh crime dramas, like it's the facts.
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No embellishment, no nothing.
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Just stick to the facts.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And you basically have to go out of your way to prove what you know.
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So for example, I had a case where there was a building that the storm runoff was running on a neighboring property.
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And I was writing in my report, the neighboring building, the roof is sloped from north to south.
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And I was and I was getting it QA/QC-ed, I'm like, well
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QA/QC?
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Quality Assurance/Quality Control. Before we send it out someone else peer reviews your report, right?
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They're just nitpicking every aspect of what you've written basically.
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Exactly.
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So they were saying like how do you know that it's you know... Did you go up there and measure?
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No, I didn't go up there and measure 'cause it's obvious.
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No.
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It's not obvious.
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It's not obvious to the lay person.
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It's not obvious to somebody reading this report how it is that you know that their roof was sloped because it's a low sloped roof.
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It's you know, it's only sloping at a quarter inch per foot.
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So I instinctually know that is sloped because there of course there's the gutters.
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But I had to go up there with a level and measure it.
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Okay Okay.
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But this seems like I mean I imagine it's very annoying, but it also seems encouraging somehow that there are mechanisms to make sure these things are as accurate as possible.
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Yeah, because you you basically want to shut down every avenue for the opposing counsel to question on how you know something.
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You know, I know something because X, Y, and Z.
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You know, I looked up property records.
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You know, according to the property records, this building was built X, Y, and Z.
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It has this type of foundation, it has this type of windows.
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This is how I know.
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So if an opposing counsel is taking a crack at you, is that usually happening in the courtroom or like in a deposition or in a mediation or all the above?
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Depositions now, like most of my depositions have been on Zoom.
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Oh.
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Usually in my office.
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That's gotta take some of the stress out of it, right?
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Not all of it, I'm sure, but...
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Yeah.
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Um, you know, like but trials are usually in the courtroom sometimes.
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Sometimes they allow you to video.
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It really depends on, you know, if it's a federal case or if it's state court or municipal court.
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But what you know what what they say is that the the witness stand is a very lonely place because no one's gonna come to defend you.
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Even your own attorney that's on your side, they don't stop the line of questioning.
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They may object to the line of questioning.
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But you still have to answer because you're under oath and some attorneys can be ruthless.
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You know, they start attacking your your credibility, they start attacking you personally.
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And you know, as long as you understand that it's it's not personal You know, it's just part of the game.
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You know, it's just part of the business.
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And you understand if you're not taking those shots personally and don't let 'em get onto your skin because a lot of times that's what they're trying to do.
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It's they're trying to get you riled up.
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To get you to make a mistake, to make you say something that you shouldn't have said so they can, you know, go down that line of uh questioning.
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That seems like an easy thing to understand intellectually, "Don't let them rile you up, it's not personal." But it seems like it'd be a very hard thing not to feel in the moment when they're coming at you.
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Like how how did you learn to show patience in those situations?
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It's not easy, but you just sometimes you just just think of it as a game or just think of it as if they're not really talking about you personally.
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They're they're talking about a fictional person named Jorge McCormack, you know.
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And you just kinda have this third party experience where it's they're not attacking you.
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And y and you know when they start to do that, they don't have a case.
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Oh, so it it's almost like a sign of weakness, yeah.
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Huh.
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Yeah, yeah, because if if the facts are on the side, they you argue the facts, but if the facts are not on the side, they'll try to discredit you as an expert witness.
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And so what are the kind of tactics that you've seen other attorneys use to try to rattle you?
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So Sometimes they'll they'll go into your past, they'll look at your work history.
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Oh, why why did you leave design?
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Why did you come to this field?
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Is it because they pay you more money?
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Is it because you couldn't cut it as a design architect?
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Wait, are you serious?
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That that is such a like just generic bully kind of question.
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Like they know nothing.
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They have no information.
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They're just kind of hoping you'll dangle something that's juicy
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Yeah, you you know, for you say like, yeah, you know, I I make a lot more money doing this than I ever didn't design.
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Like, oh so you're basically a mercenary.
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You're just doing this for no money.
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You don't really care, do you?
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You know, according to the AIA code of ethics, you know that it's imp you know, you can get kicked out of the organization for lying.
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Are you lying right now?
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They'll they'll do little things like that.
00:15:16.559 --> 00:15:18.639
That is so infuriating.
00:15:18.639 --> 00:15:19.120
Yeah.
00:15:19.120 --> 00:15:22.159
And you gotta remember, you are under oath.
00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:23.360
They are not.
00:15:24.159 --> 00:15:28.399
So you have to be truthful and you have to be dead honest.
00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:38.960
And they'll try to get you to agree to things that are not necessarily engineering or architecture or technical, you know, questions they'll, you know, say like was this design safe, for example?
00:15:39.320 --> 00:15:40.679
Well what is safe?
00:15:40.679 --> 00:15:42.519
What does safe mean?
00:15:42.519 --> 00:15:48.440
You design things to engineering and architectural standards, right?
00:15:48.440 --> 00:15:57.198
So for example, a road is designed per engineering standards, but you still have accidents on roads all the time.
00:15:57.198 --> 00:15:59.440
People die in car accidents all the time.
00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:01.759
Does that mean the road is unsafe?
00:16:01.940 --> 00:16:03.940
No, the road is not unsafe.
00:16:03.940 --> 00:16:06.820
The road is designed per engineering standards.
00:16:06.899 --> 00:16:12.659
Coming up a part of the job that's even worse than being grilled by opposing attorneys?
00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:13.860
Stay with us.
00:16:15.659 --> 00:16:25.980
I'm Reema Krais, and on This Is Uncomfortable, we talk about the emotional side of money, what it does to our relationships, our sense of self, and the choices we make.
00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:31.360
Each week I talk with real people and experts about the parts of money we usually keep to ourselves.
00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:36.840
Tune in every Thursday to hear conversations and stories about life and how money messes with it.
00:16:36.840 --> 00:16:41.000
Listen to This Is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.
00:16:44.559 --> 00:16:48.639
Has AI changed your job or the way you do it?
00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:50.078
Not yet.
00:16:50.078 --> 00:16:53.360
AI can help a lot when it comes to...
00:16:53.919 --> 00:17:00.559
You know, sometimes you'll you'll get a a a set of documents and a lot of times I I know lawyers do this intentionally.
00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:08.558
They'll save everything as a PDF, whether it's an email, whether it's a photo, whether it's a pay application, whether they're drawings, right?
00:17:08.259 --> 00:17:12.578
And they'll just take a raw database file where they remove all the file names.
00:17:12.578 --> 00:17:17.298
And you know, I have one case where they gave me 41,000 files.
00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:19.299
None of them had names.
00:17:19.299 --> 00:17:20.660
They were all disorganized.
00:17:20.660 --> 00:17:21.940
And they're like, here you go.
00:17:21.940 --> 00:17:23.380
Here's our case file.
00:17:23.380 --> 00:17:24.338
Right, right.
00:17:24.338 --> 00:17:27.619
So how do I know what to look for?
00:17:27.660 --> 00:17:34.380
Luckily we have AI tools that can sift through a lot of the documents and say, hey, find me the uh pay applications.
00:17:34.380 --> 00:17:35.660
How much did this cost?
00:17:35.660 --> 00:17:37.579
Find me all the RFIs.
00:17:37.619 --> 00:17:39.779
And you know, it can it can kind of sort that.
00:17:39.779 --> 00:17:48.660
You still have to read everything because, you know, this is your name on your report, but it could save a bunch of time just by going through all of those documents.
00:17:48.359 --> 00:17:50.038
God, that's a great use case.
00:17:50.038 --> 00:17:59.319
So does that mean that the file dump we always see on like legal shows you know where one side hazes another by sending over, you know, a U-Haul truck full of documents?
00:17:59.359 --> 00:18:02.000
Is AI gonna fix that trick, you think?
00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:03.278
That's a digital version of that.
00:18:03.278 --> 00:18:09.839
And a lot of times they'll what they'll do is they'll rasterize their PDFs so you can't do a control F.
00:18:11.079 --> 00:18:12.440
And they just dump it on you.
00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:17.079
And then like you're looking through photos and you know you're trying to see their photos and they're all saved as PDFs.
00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:22.519
Like, oh man, I know they do this intentionally because they're trying to like drive up the cost on billiable hours.
00:18:22.980 --> 00:18:26.420
What's the absolute worst part of your job?
00:18:26.500 --> 00:18:28.099
Being away from my kids.
00:18:28.740 --> 00:18:31.059
Because a lot of times you can't really plan around...
00:18:31.059 --> 00:18:34.500
Like for example, I just got back from being out of state.
00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:41.798
I missed my son's Cub Scout meeting it was the first Cub Scout meeting of the year where we were gonna sell popcorn and he wanted me to be there.
00:18:41.798 --> 00:18:51.000
But you know, there's an emergency and you know, I just got a call now again to I have to be down in South Florida next week for a few days.
00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:57.640
And so this is part of the job that when duty calls, it's not predictable, but when you get the call, like you have to go.
00:18:57.940 --> 00:19:01.859
You have to go and a lot of times you buy tickets one way 'cause you don't know when you're coming back.
00:19:02.019 --> 00:19:06.659
Especially during what we call the cat season, um, which is catastrophic events.
00:19:06.659 --> 00:19:08.898
You know, like the the earthquake in Colombia.
00:19:08.898 --> 00:19:12.579
You know, I'm still waiting on the call for us to go down there.
00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:14.079
So how long might you be gone?
00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:17.679
It it could be a day or two days or a week. You just don't know.
00:19:19.599 --> 00:19:20.720
And that's tough.
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:37.339
And and my son, especially when he came to our our headquarters we have photos of, you know, sometimes we do facade inspections and we have to rappel down buildings or hang off a swing stage, which you know, when it's when it's windy and it's hot, it's it's not fun, but it's part of the job.
00:19:37.419 --> 00:19:39.740
You have to rappel down buildings.
00:19:39.740 --> 00:19:43.099
I I had no idea there was like a daredevil part of this job.
00:19:43.039 --> 00:19:43.759
Yeah.
00:19:43.759 --> 00:19:44.160
Yeah.
00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:45.359
I haven't done it yet.
00:19:45.359 --> 00:19:47.920
There's a couple of people in our in our company that do do that.
00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:50.079
I do go off swing stages and booms.
00:19:50.079 --> 00:19:51.759
What's a swing stage?
00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:54.059
It's basically a like a suspended platform.
00:19:54.059 --> 00:19:54.539
Okay.
00:19:54.539 --> 00:20:03.900
You know, sometimes they use it for clean cleaning windows, but you know, when we're doing facade inspections, we'll we'll go off of that from the top of the building, sometimes like a forty story building.
00:20:03.819 --> 00:20:06.859
In New York City we we do a lot of the rappelling stuff.
00:20:06.859 --> 00:20:07.339
Okay.
00:20:07.579 --> 00:20:17.819
But, anyway, so he thinks my son, he's seven, he thinks that's what I'm doing every time I go to work, so he cries and cries he because he thinks I'm gonna get killed.
00:20:18.298 --> 00:20:21.099
He thinks I'm I'm gonna uh an accident's gonna happen.
00:20:21.099 --> 00:20:22.380
Oh poor thing.
00:20:22.380 --> 00:20:25.579
You need to show him the report writing part of your job.
00:20:25.460 --> 00:20:35.940
Well, he he does see that, but he also he'll also see that, you know, like for example in Alabama was I was eighty feet in the air on a boom that was moving a lot, let's just say.
00:20:35.940 --> 00:20:37.779
Uh looking at that facade.
00:20:37.779 --> 00:20:40.579
And I took a selfie when I was up there and sent it to my wife.
00:20:40.579 --> 00:20:43.460
And I'm like, hey, make sure Jorge knows I'm not doing this.
00:20:43.460 --> 00:20:45.380
You know, my son knows I'm not doing this.
00:20:45.740 --> 00:20:51.500
This is a fun job to hear about because it has so many seemingly disconnected parts.
00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:56.859
You have the kind of holistic designish vision of the architect.
00:20:56.839 --> 00:21:04.200
And you have the like hands-on, you know, eyeballs and hands-on a stucco finish detective work.
00:21:04.200 --> 00:21:18.359
And then you have like the analytical work of compiling reports and formatting them And then you have this kind of full combat, you know, facing down an opposing attorney, which is performative and verbal.
00:21:18.359 --> 00:21:23.000
Like it's just a really weird mix of skills that you need to be good at this.
00:21:23.140 --> 00:21:29.380
It's a lot of different things and that's why I fell in love with the profession because it's not sitting in front of a computer all day.
00:21:29.380 --> 00:21:32.019
A lot of it's being out in the field, you know.
00:21:32.019 --> 00:21:39.200
You get to play with a lot of cool tools, you know, you get to fly with the drone or you get to use these fancy moisture meters.
00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:45.920
And you have to build a story because, you know, you you really have to think outside the box, like what could be causing this?
00:21:46.900 --> 00:21:50.900
So, Jorge, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions.
00:21:50.900 --> 00:21:52.099
Here we go.
00:21:52.099 --> 00:21:56.740
What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know?
00:21:56.740 --> 00:21:57.779
And what does it mean?
00:21:58.299 --> 00:21:59.420
Envelope.
00:21:59.420 --> 00:22:01.339
The building envelope.
00:22:01.339 --> 00:22:02.220
Envelope.
00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:02.700
Yes.
00:22:02.700 --> 00:22:06.700
The building envelope is the thing that encapsulates the building.
00:22:06.700 --> 00:22:10.619
The exterior walls, the windows, the doors, the roof.
00:22:10.559 --> 00:22:12.799
That's all part of the envelope, right?
00:22:12.799 --> 00:22:13.279
Okay.
00:22:13.279 --> 00:22:17.200
And fenestration, which is another fancy word of saying doors and windows.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:20.640
I only know that from the word defenestration.
00:22:21.759 --> 00:22:24.799
But I never thought about what fenestration means.
00:22:24.940 --> 00:22:25.500
Yeah.
00:22:25.500 --> 00:22:30.778
What's the most insulting thing you could say about a forensic architect's work?
00:22:30.778 --> 00:22:33.579
Oh, I I mean about forensic architect.
00:22:33.579 --> 00:22:46.339
Well the the most insulting thing I hear about architects is that all we do is make pretty pictures One anecdote I heard is that an architect was not smart enough to be an engineer, but not creative enough to be an interior designer, so we're somewhere in the middle.
00:22:46.740 --> 00:22:48.099
That's not the case.
00:22:50.740 --> 00:22:52.819
The amount of knowledge that you have to have in order to become a licensed architect.
00:22:52.819 --> 00:22:58.740
It takes an average of ten years for someone who starts out architecture school to become a licensed architect, right?
00:22:58.740 --> 00:23:04.599
You know, there's a lot of all-nighters, you know, there's a plethora of knowledge that you have to digest.
00:23:04.599 --> 00:23:07.880
At least in my day, it was seven day-long exams.
00:23:07.880 --> 00:23:08.440
Whoa.
00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:12.599
And in some states like California, they require an additional exam.
00:23:12.299 --> 00:23:16.700
So it's a lot of examination, a lot of school and architecture school is not cheap.
00:23:17.180 --> 00:23:21.660
What is a tool specific to your profession that you really like using?
00:23:21.819 --> 00:23:23.500
Oh, this is my favorite one.
00:23:23.500 --> 00:23:26.220
It is called the Tramex RWS.
00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:28.940
It is a pinless moisture meter.
00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:30.220
Pinless moisture?
00:23:30.460 --> 00:23:32.539
What does the pinless part mean?
00:23:32.500 --> 00:23:39.859
So a lot of moisture meters have these two electrical probes that will measure the resistance, the electrical impedance between one pin and the other.
00:23:39.859 --> 00:23:40.339
Oh, I see.
00:23:40.500 --> 00:23:44.579
And you know, if it's more conductive, it could be a sign that there's some moisture in in that wall
00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:44.799
Yeah.
00:23:44.799 --> 00:23:55.519
What I like about the the Tramex is that not only is it pinless, so you don't have to destroy anything, you have to poke anything, but it can actually measure moisture on up to four inches into any type of wall assembly.
00:23:55.519 --> 00:24:01.980
So it sends like an electromagnetic pulse from a sender to the receiver and it sees, you know, the difference.
00:24:01.980 --> 00:24:07.740
It's a very expensive, very high tech piece of equipment that looks like it's straight out of the seventies, right?
00:24:07.859 --> 00:24:10.259
It looks like an old fashioned tape recorder.
00:24:10.259 --> 00:24:13.299
Or out of Star Wars, like the original Star Wars movie.
00:24:13.299 --> 00:24:13.779
Yeah.
00:24:13.779 --> 00:24:28.480
It has these like big buttons, but it's a very high-tech piece of equipment and what's great about it is that it can guide you as to where you need to potentially open something up or where you where you need to investigate further without actually having to rip up the whole building.
00:24:28.919 --> 00:24:33.640
What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of a forensic architect?
00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:35.798
The Daubert motion.
00:24:35.798 --> 00:24:36.119
Oh.
00:24:36.859 --> 00:24:46.220
The Daubert motion is something that an opposing attorney can um issue and basically it's undermining your credibility.
00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:53.500
So if they're saying that you are not a credible witness, they can get you thrown off a case as an expert witness, it's a Daubert motion.
00:24:53.500 --> 00:25:06.799
You know, they'll go to the judge and say, hey, this person is not credible because of X, Y, and Z, or they dig up something in your past or they find something in your report that is not credible or is incorrect, they can file a Daubert motion and get you removed from a case.
00:25:06.660 --> 00:25:15.059
Now is this the kind of thing that they try a Hail Mary every case just to see if it'll work, or is it like really reserved for weird, rare instances?
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:23.200
No, sometimes they'll they'll threaten it in a in a case but you know, i they can file it, but if it's not accepted, you know, i it doesn't go anywhere.
00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:34.119
But yeah, if that does happen that stays on your record forever as an expert witness and that could be the death knell for for you as an expert witness because it it undermines your credibility, especially if it's if it's accepted.
00:25:38.559 --> 00:25:40.960
Because now from them on, every opposing attorney is like, "Isn't it true that you were Dauberted?" Or whatever the verb is.
00:25:40.960 --> 00:25:46.240
Yeah, you got removed from a case, you know, a Daubert motion was filed against you and you got removed from a case.
00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:48.880
I mean, have you known anybody that that happened to?
00:25:49.140 --> 00:25:54.259
Personally, no, I've heard people have had it threatened against them, but they never follow through with it.
00:25:54.259 --> 00:25:58.180
Um, because it's it's kind of a high standard to get yourself thrown off a case.
00:25:58.259 --> 00:26:00.339
Um and it usually has to be something egregious.
00:26:00.339 --> 00:26:11.538
You lied on your resume about your uh your past or you know, there there was one case where an expert witness used AI to write his report and he used a free version of Chat GPT.
00:26:11.740 --> 00:26:12.460
Oh man.
00:26:12.460 --> 00:26:13.500
And it was a big case.
00:26:13.500 --> 00:26:19.339
And her prompt was like, hey, write me an expert report where our client has zero culpability.
00:26:19.339 --> 00:26:20.140
Come on.
00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:23.339
That does not put the profession in a good light, does it?
00:26:23.339 --> 00:26:23.740
No.
00:26:24.759 --> 00:26:29.159
What is a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?
00:26:29.319 --> 00:26:32.839
The hollow sounding of stucco or concrete.
00:26:32.839 --> 00:26:44.220
So a lot of times when water gets behind a you know a wall cavity uh or gets behind stucco There's this metal lav that they use to uh adhere stucco to.
00:26:44.220 --> 00:26:46.700
That's just like a small chicken wire mesh
00:26:46.460 --> 00:26:46.859
Okay.
00:26:46.859 --> 00:26:51.819
If water gets in there it starts to rust and when things start to rust they expand, right?
00:26:51.819 --> 00:26:55.819
So it starts to delaminate from the stucco assembly, right?
00:26:55.819 --> 00:27:00.859
So you you sometimes you take a hammer and you do a tap test and you can hear, you know, like a hard sound like...
00:27:03.900 --> 00:27:05.660
it starts to change.
00:27:05.460 --> 00:27:12.339
When you start to change, that's another clue that, you know, water has been um or in concrete as well, you know, with with the rebar.
00:27:12.339 --> 00:27:13.940
It starts to sound hollow.
00:27:14.140 --> 00:27:18.059
Um and then you you can mark that area where you have to open up and investigate further.
00:27:18.059 --> 00:27:26.900
Another sound which is really scary is the the case I was mentioning earlier where You stick your finger through a a a wood column and it disintegrates.
00:27:27.140 --> 00:27:29.380
It's almost like biting into a rice crispy.
00:27:29.380 --> 00:27:31.380
It just falls apart in your hand.
00:27:31.380 --> 00:27:33.460
Oh man, that's a great analogy.
00:27:33.460 --> 00:27:35.380
I can totally imagine that.
00:27:35.299 --> 00:27:38.740
And I can imagine how terrifying it would be to do that.
00:27:38.740 --> 00:27:41.220
Yeah, especially when you were standing underneath it.
00:27:41.940 --> 00:27:46.099
What is an aspect of your work that you consistently savor?
00:27:46.500 --> 00:27:56.900
When you get uh compliments from your attorneys, especially if you have an opposing uh attorney hired you for the next case, but that's more on the business end of things.
00:27:56.900 --> 00:28:06.019
The more spiritual side of things, especially when you're on a plaintiff case, when a client will come and thank you and say how much they appreciate you fixing their building.
00:28:06.019 --> 00:28:11.720
You know, because for a lot of people their buildings are not just a financial investment.
00:28:11.720 --> 00:28:13.559
It's where their families live.
00:28:14.119 --> 00:28:16.359
It's where their kids play.
00:28:16.339 --> 00:28:25.700
And to find out what's causing an issue and to make a building safe and to see the the appreciation that you you'll get sometimes is that's why I do it, you know.
00:28:25.700 --> 00:28:35.000
That's because a lot of times, you know, uh a client will be put in a really bad position by buying a really, you know, really poorly designed, poorly constructed building.
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:36.359
And they're living under this.
00:28:36.359 --> 00:28:43.960
You know, they're living with with the constant fear of, you know, getting sick from the building or the building collapsing or the building, you know, or whatever number of issues it could have.
00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:54.240
But you you coming in and and fixing it and you know making it making it a safe place for people to raise their family, that's always rewarding.
00:29:03.500 --> 00:29:08.539
Jorge McCormack is a forensic architect in Florida.
00:29:09.140 --> 00:29:13.859
So folks, this is the last episode of season one.
00:29:13.859 --> 00:29:17.859
And don't worry, there is a season two coming, more on that next week.
00:29:17.859 --> 00:29:23.380
And yes, for the record, this was a three-year 83 episode season.
00:29:23.740 --> 00:29:29.259
In all that time, we've never had a reflection about AI.
00:29:29.259 --> 00:29:30.940
It's time.
00:29:30.940 --> 00:29:37.660
I believe AI is going to be the single greatest force in our lifetime affecting work.
00:29:37.539 --> 00:29:44.660
And this conversation with Jorge was almost like a trailer for that impact, both the good and bad.
00:29:44.660 --> 00:29:53.799
The bad, well, that guy who got busted for using AI to spin up his report That's the worst case scenario.
00:29:53.799 --> 00:30:04.119
That human beings get so lazy and so dependent that people stop reading and thinking and we just outsource our brains to AI.
00:30:04.679 --> 00:30:16.679
On the other hand, there's promise too, the way Jorge uses AI to sift through 41,000 files dumped on him by the other team, looking for the bits that are important.
00:30:16.839 --> 00:30:19.558
That's pretty magical.
00:30:19.558 --> 00:30:22.359
And then there's what's coming.
00:30:22.359 --> 00:30:32.660
What if an AI could fly its own drone to a building with a pinless moisture detector hooked up to it, would that be good or bad?
00:30:32.660 --> 00:30:45.180
What if the attorney cross-examining Jorge had an AI agent monitoring his testimony in real time to identify little inconsistencies that the lawyer could use to trip him up?
00:30:45.180 --> 00:30:50.380
The point is not to marvel or recoil at the technology.
00:30:50.559 --> 00:30:57.519
For us on this show, it's to assess its effects on how people experience their jobs.
00:30:57.519 --> 00:31:04.700
Because this is a show about what it's like to be people of different professions.
00:31:04.700 --> 00:31:10.539
And for better or worse, those professions are changing right now.
00:31:10.539 --> 00:31:12.619
And we'll be a witness to it.
00:31:14.038 --> 00:31:27.480
Listening for hollow spots in stucco, keeping your cool while lawyers try to rattle you, compiling reports full of defensible facts, and diagnosing the flaws and risks in the spaces that people depend on.
00:31:28.640 --> 00:31:34.960
Folks, that's what it's like to be a forensic architect.
00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:47.839
A shout out To recent Apple Podcast reviewers, we've got Griswold Bookbinder, DonCheetwood, Ob-1, SnowQueen1720, Slimb, looking for comfort, and Nora GSD.
00:31:47.900 --> 00:31:51.579
This episode was produced by Matt Purdy.
00:31:51.579 --> 00:31:52.940
I'm Dan Heath.
00:31:52.940 --> 00:31:54.460
See you soon.
00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:10.400
Jorge McCormack trained and practiced as a design architect, but several years back he stopped designing buildings and started diagnosing them.
00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:13.679
He's now a forensic architect.
00:00:13.638 --> 00:00:21.000
So I guess the best way to describe it is a building doctor.
00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:28.739
If a building is too cold, if it's too hot, if it's leaking, smells funny or making weird noises.
00:00:28.739 --> 00:00:33.698
They'll call a forensic architect to come in and diagnose the patient.
00:00:33.619 --> 00:00:39.378
And he uses that diagnosis to serve as an expert witness in lawsuits.
00:00:39.378 --> 00:00:42.659
That's where the forensic part of his job comes in.
00:00:42.659 --> 00:00:48.259
Now, we're gonna get into the weeds later of how he does all that diagnostic work, but first, a spoiler.
00:00:48.859 --> 00:00:53.020
The villain of these stories is often water.
00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:57.100
Water can lead to a lot of different problems with a building.
00:00:57.100 --> 00:01:03.100
It's usually the number one culprit of any type of building design defects or construction defects.
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Mold can lead to suspected organic growth, which is another way of saying mold.
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And you know, we don't like saying mold because it triggers certain legal repercussions that have to be followed if we use the word.
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So we always say suspected organic growth.
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Oh really?
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Suspected organic Organic growth, I love that.
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Suspected organic growth. We don't know it's mold because you know they they have to take it to a lab and they have to test it and verify that it's actually mold.
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But most of my cases it's usually water getting into the building somehow
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Even architectural masterpieces are not immune to the effects of water.
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You know, they have this idea that being a great designer means that physics no longer applies to you.
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You know, Falling Water is a great example.
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They call it, you know, Leaking Water because it leaks all over the place because Frank Lloyd Wright didn't pay attention to waterproofing details.
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The Guggenheim is another great example that leaks.
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You know because physics is physics.
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You can't suspend the laws of physics just because you're a starchitect.
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I'm Dan Heath, and this is what it's like to be In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession.
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A veterinarian, a floral decorator, a life insurance agent.
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We want to know what they do all day at work.
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Today we'll ask Jorge McCormack what it's like to be a forensic architect.
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We'll talk about how he uses sound to diagnose a building's problems.
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How opposing attorneys try to trip him up when he's testifying, and what happens when you discover that a building's support beams are crumbling?
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Stay with us.
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When something goes badly wrong with a building, people start pointing fingers.
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Then they call lawyers.
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And the lawyers call Jorge.
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His job is to figure out what went wrong with the building and why.
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You know, whether it's a design issue, whether the engineer didn't do the correct calculations, whether the architect didn't design per code, whether he did not meet the standard of care, whether a contractor, you know, did not follow the plans.
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You know, there's a lot of investigating that has to happen.
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And sometimes it's no one's fault.
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Sometimes it's what we call an act of God.
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About 80% of the time Jorge is hired by the defendant in a lawsuit, usually a contractor or subcontractor being sued by a building owner.
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The rest of the time he's on the other side.
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So here's an example.
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In one case there was a building owner who hired Jorge.
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There had been some issues with the interior finishes in a building, and there was a lawsuit brewing, because the owner thought maybe the contractors didn't build it properly, so Jorge came out to look around.
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And I was walking the exterior, I noticed that there was a lot of cracking on the stucco.
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And I'm like, huh, that's interesting.
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It's so, you know, stucco is like a cementitious finish.
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It's kind of like a concrete.
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Mm-hmm.
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But it always cracks, you know, especially if it's on a wood substrate, because you know, wood and concrete are two unlike materials that expand and contract at different rates, right?
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So stucco is always gonna crack.
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But there's certain amounts of cracking that's allowable, tolerable, and and normal.
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This is cracking way more.
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So I tell the client, like, hey, let's go test the stucco.
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Let's let's take some probes.
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You know, let's just cut out a little section on the wall and measure the thickness to see if it was installed per for the ASDM standard.
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We get out there, we open a hole in the wall, we look behind the wall.
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The structural columns are gone.
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The structural column like like the columns that are holding up the building basically.
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The building.
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The holding up balconies holding up buildings.
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have deteriorated to the point where it is no longer structurally viable.
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Oh man.
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And so w what does that actually look like?
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Does it look like rotted wood or what did you see?
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You can stick your finger through it and it just disintegrates.
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Oh man.
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Yeah.
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That's terrifying.
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So how come the building had not collapsed?
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You know, because there's still a lot of redundancy, especially when it comes to wood frame buildings, right?
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Okay.
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The load path goes through a lot of different areas, but what happened is there was a design and construction issue that wasn't followed, and those wall cavities were basically acting like gutters.
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And that was another clue because I wanted...
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usually when we take probes, we take like little uh circular cores.
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We come with with a bit, we drill in, we come out, and then we measure the different thicknesses of the stucco, the the OSB, the the the sheathing.
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What's OSB?
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OSB is oriented strand board.
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You know, people call it particle board.
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Oh okay.
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I'm not a big fan of it because it doesn't if it ever gets moisture, it just turns into oatmeal.
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It loses a lot of his structural uh ability.
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So I you know, I I tend to say, you know, if you're gonna build out a wood, build out a plywood.
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Yeah.
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But OSB, you know, a lot of developers like it because it meets minimum standard and uh it's cheap.
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Okay.
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But if it gets moisture, it just disintegrates.
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Like you can just grab it and pull it apart, right?
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So I I noticed that there was a peculiar issue with with some of the balcony details and some of the terraces.
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And And I said, you know, let's instead of doing the cores, let's open up a a larger hole because I want to look behind there.
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And that probably saved a lot of lives in the future because we had to come in and put emergency shoring on all the balconies.
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And this all started out from the initial investigation was some interior finishes that were not right.
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Oh man.
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So you thought it was almost like a cosmetic story in a way and it turns out to be this building is gonna fall down unless we do something.
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Yeah, we had to scramble and and get everything uh shored up.
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So we had to open up all all the walls and all the buildings.
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And yeah, it's it's still ongoing.
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When you're hired by somebody, is your job to help the side that hired you, or are you supposed to be neutral?
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We're supposed to be neutral.
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So you're only as good as your reputation, right?
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You know, and sometimes you have to deliver clients bad news, and especially attorneys, because attorneys have to figure out how they're going about their case.
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And if you just give 'em something that they want to hear, you know, they may not have the leverage or they may have a lot more exposure than what they originally thought.
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But nobody wants to pay you guys a bunch of money for a report and then have it favor the person they're up against in court.
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Like how do they mitigate that risk?
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Sometimes we will just do a verbal opinion.
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So if if they don't want a full report, which you know takes time, it takes billable hours, we can just do our site investigation.
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And a lot of times I'll start out with that.
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And you say like, hey, do you wanna me to start out with the verbal report?
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And a verbal report just it's just a phone call.
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Okay.
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And say like, hey, I think you have a lot of exposure here.
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I think your your client messed up here or your client oh, your client is free and clear.
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Do you want us to rebut the report and go move forward?
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So We we have these steps, you know, to kind of mitigate the cost.
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Oh, okay.
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So they can kinda get a a sidebar in advance before, you know, they pay you a huge fee and th they don't they don't want to be surprised at the end of that, in other words.
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So there's ways that you can kind of signal how you're feeling about the situation.
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Yeah.
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And a lot of times like the attorneys will just tell us from straight up like, hey, how big is our exposure here?
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Or how little how good is our case or how bad is our case?
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Should we just settle?
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And you know, there's been times where I'll I'll tell the attorney I'll see something on site that uh another side missed.
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And I'm like, oh, hey, you might want to settle because you have a lot of exposure here.
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So it sounds like in your role the report is like a key piece of work product.
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Like you're frequently filing official reports with clients, yeah?
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Yeah.
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That's basically my new construction drawing, you know, my new rendering, right?
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My new beautiful product, right?
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Which is funny because I went to architecture school because I don't like to read and write.
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And now I'm in a profession that's where, that's all I do.
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So read and write.
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And what does a report look like?
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I mean, is it is it five pages?
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Is it fifty pages?
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Is it a thousand pages?
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What should we envision?
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Oh, it depends on the case.
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You know, some are very simple, straightforward, and you know, if it's a big building with a lot of different issues, you know, if there's, you know, different disciplines, if there's a cost component to it.
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You know, we we have cost estimations to have a number to ask for or to rebut someone else's number if they're saying, like, hey, you you owe us X amount of money for all of the construction defects.
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We can, you know, do our own analysis and say, no, we disagree with that number.
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This is what the number is.
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But the thing about the reports...
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Architects on the design side tend to be very romantic about our use of language when we talk about buildings.
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You know, we we use a lot of poetic language, you know, like uh creating a moment, creating you know, creating space that, you know you know, generates a feeling.
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Mm-hmm.
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Forensic architecture is the complete opposite.
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It's almost like you're divorcing somebody.
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You're not courting anybody.
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You're divorcing somebody, right?
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Because you...
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And you have to be careful.
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You have to write in a certain way where you're not using, you know, absolutes.
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You know, you're not using flowery language.
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You're not saying, like, for example, "This was an egregious violation of the building code." Well what make something "egregious" or what is a "minor" violation of the building code?
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It's either yes or no.
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It's either violating the building code or not violating the building code.
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So it's very factual, very simple.
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It it's almost like when you see police officers testify on like TV uh uh crime dramas, like it's the facts.
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No embellishment, no nothing.
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Just stick to the facts.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And you basically have to go out of your way to prove what you know.
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So for example, I had a case where there was a building that the storm runoff was running on a neighboring property.
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And I was writing in my report, the neighboring building, the roof is sloped from north to south.
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And I was and I was getting it QA/QC-ed, I'm like, well
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QA/QC?
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Quality Assurance/Quality Control. Before we send it out someone else peer reviews your report, right?
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They're just nitpicking every aspect of what you've written basically.
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Exactly.
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So they were saying like how do you know that it's you know... Did you go up there and measure?
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No, I didn't go up there and measure 'cause it's obvious.
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No.
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It's not obvious.
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It's not obvious to the lay person.
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It's not obvious to somebody reading this report how it is that you know that their roof was sloped because it's a low sloped roof.
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It's you know, it's only sloping at a quarter inch per foot.
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So I instinctually know that is sloped because there of course there's the gutters.
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But I had to go up there with a level and measure it.
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Okay Okay.
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But this seems like I mean I imagine it's very annoying, but it also seems encouraging somehow that there are mechanisms to make sure these things are as accurate as possible.
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Yeah, because you you basically want to shut down every avenue for the opposing counsel to question on how you know something.
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You know, I know something because X, Y, and Z.
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You know, I looked up property records.
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You know, according to the property records, this building was built X, Y, and Z.
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It has this type of foundation, it has this type of windows.
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This is how I know.
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So if an opposing counsel is taking a crack at you, is that usually happening in the courtroom or like in a deposition or in a mediation or all the above?
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Depositions now, like most of my depositions have been on Zoom.
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Oh.
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Usually in my office.
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That's gotta take some of the stress out of it, right?
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Not all of it, I'm sure, but...
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Yeah.
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Um, you know, like but trials are usually in the courtroom sometimes.
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Sometimes they allow you to video.
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It really depends on, you know, if it's a federal case or if it's state court or municipal court.
00:12:55.620 --> 00:13:01.458
But what you know what what they say is that the the witness stand is a very lonely place because no one's gonna come to defend you.
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Even your own attorney that's on your side, they don't stop the line of questioning.
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They may object to the line of questioning.
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But you still have to answer because you're under oath and some attorneys can be ruthless.
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You know, they start attacking your your credibility, they start attacking you personally.
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And you know, as long as you understand that it's it's not personal You know, it's just part of the game.
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You know, it's just part of the business.
00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:29.559
And you understand if you're not taking those shots personally and don't let 'em get onto your skin because a lot of times that's what they're trying to do.
00:13:29.559 --> 00:13:31.720
It's they're trying to get you riled up.
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To get you to make a mistake, to make you say something that you shouldn't have said so they can, you know, go down that line of uh questioning.
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That seems like an easy thing to understand intellectually, "Don't let them rile you up, it's not personal." But it seems like it'd be a very hard thing not to feel in the moment when they're coming at you.
00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:54.240
Like how how did you learn to show patience in those situations?
00:13:54.839 --> 00:14:02.120
It's not easy, but you just sometimes you just just think of it as a game or just think of it as if they're not really talking about you personally.
00:14:02.120 --> 00:14:06.198
They're they're talking about a fictional person named Jorge McCormack, you know.
00:14:05.958 --> 00:14:09.559
And you just kinda have this third party experience where it's they're not attacking you.
00:14:09.559 --> 00:14:12.839
And y and you know when they start to do that, they don't have a case.
00:14:12.839 --> 00:14:16.360
Oh, so it it's almost like a sign of weakness, yeah.
00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:16.559
Huh.
00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:25.600
Yeah, yeah, because if if the facts are on the side, they you argue the facts, but if the facts are not on the side, they'll try to discredit you as an expert witness.
00:14:25.360 --> 00:14:31.600
And so what are the kind of tactics that you've seen other attorneys use to try to rattle you?
00:14:32.240 --> 00:14:37.019
So Sometimes they'll they'll go into your past, they'll look at your work history.
00:14:37.019 --> 00:14:39.019
Oh, why why did you leave design?
00:14:39.019 --> 00:14:40.299
Why did you come to this field?
00:14:40.299 --> 00:14:42.059
Is it because they pay you more money?
00:14:42.059 --> 00:14:45.419
Is it because you couldn't cut it as a design architect?
00:14:45.419 --> 00:14:46.539
Wait, are you serious?
00:14:46.539 --> 00:14:50.620
That that is such a like just generic bully kind of question.
00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:51.659
Like they know nothing.
00:14:51.659 --> 00:14:52.539
They have no information.
00:14:52.539 --> 00:14:55.659
They're just kind of hoping you'll dangle something that's juicy
00:14:55.659 --> 00:15:00.460
Yeah, you you know, for you say like, yeah, you know, I I make a lot more money doing this than I ever didn't design.
00:15:00.460 --> 00:15:03.100
Like, oh so you're basically a mercenary.
00:15:03.100 --> 00:15:04.379
You're just doing this for no money.
00:15:04.379 --> 00:15:06.220
You don't really care, do you?
00:15:05.958 --> 00:15:13.080
You know, according to the AIA code of ethics, you know that it's imp you know, you can get kicked out of the organization for lying.
00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:14.360
Are you lying right now?
00:15:14.360 --> 00:15:16.679
They'll they'll do little things like that.
00:15:16.559 --> 00:15:18.639
That is so infuriating.
00:15:18.639 --> 00:15:19.120
Yeah.
00:15:19.120 --> 00:15:22.159
And you gotta remember, you are under oath.
00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:23.360
They are not.
00:15:24.159 --> 00:15:28.399
So you have to be truthful and you have to be dead honest.
00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:38.960
And they'll try to get you to agree to things that are not necessarily engineering or architecture or technical, you know, questions they'll, you know, say like was this design safe, for example?
00:15:39.320 --> 00:15:40.679
Well what is safe?
00:15:40.679 --> 00:15:42.519
What does safe mean?
00:15:42.519 --> 00:15:48.440
You design things to engineering and architectural standards, right?
00:15:48.440 --> 00:15:57.198
So for example, a road is designed per engineering standards, but you still have accidents on roads all the time.
00:15:57.198 --> 00:15:59.440
People die in car accidents all the time.
00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:01.759
Does that mean the road is unsafe?
00:16:01.940 --> 00:16:03.940
No, the road is not unsafe.
00:16:03.940 --> 00:16:06.820
The road is designed per engineering standards.
00:16:06.899 --> 00:16:12.659
Coming up a part of the job that's even worse than being grilled by opposing attorneys?
00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:13.860
Stay with us.
00:16:15.659 --> 00:16:25.980
I'm Reema Krais, and on This Is Uncomfortable, we talk about the emotional side of money, what it does to our relationships, our sense of self, and the choices we make.
00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:31.360
Each week I talk with real people and experts about the parts of money we usually keep to ourselves.
00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:36.840
Tune in every Thursday to hear conversations and stories about life and how money messes with it.
00:16:36.840 --> 00:16:41.000
Listen to This Is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.
00:16:44.559 --> 00:16:48.639
Has AI changed your job or the way you do it?
00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:50.078
Not yet.
00:16:50.078 --> 00:16:53.360
AI can help a lot when it comes to...
00:16:53.919 --> 00:17:00.559
You know, sometimes you'll you'll get a a a set of documents and a lot of times I I know lawyers do this intentionally.
00:17:00.559 --> 00:17:08.558
They'll save everything as a PDF, whether it's an email, whether it's a photo, whether it's a pay application, whether they're drawings, right?
00:17:08.259 --> 00:17:12.578
And they'll just take a raw database file where they remove all the file names.
00:17:12.578 --> 00:17:17.298
And you know, I have one case where they gave me 41,000 files.
00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:19.299
None of them had names.
00:17:19.299 --> 00:17:20.660
They were all disorganized.
00:17:20.660 --> 00:17:21.940
And they're like, here you go.
00:17:21.940 --> 00:17:23.380
Here's our case file.
00:17:23.380 --> 00:17:24.338
Right, right.
00:17:24.338 --> 00:17:27.619
So how do I know what to look for?
00:17:27.660 --> 00:17:34.380
Luckily we have AI tools that can sift through a lot of the documents and say, hey, find me the uh pay applications.
00:17:34.380 --> 00:17:35.660
How much did this cost?
00:17:35.660 --> 00:17:37.579
Find me all the RFIs.
00:17:37.619 --> 00:17:39.779
And you know, it can it can kind of sort that.
00:17:39.779 --> 00:17:48.660
You still have to read everything because, you know, this is your name on your report, but it could save a bunch of time just by going through all of those documents.
00:17:48.359 --> 00:17:50.038
God, that's a great use case.
00:17:50.038 --> 00:17:59.319
So does that mean that the file dump we always see on like legal shows you know where one side hazes another by sending over, you know, a U-Haul truck full of documents?
00:17:59.359 --> 00:18:02.000
Is AI gonna fix that trick, you think?
00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:03.278
That's a digital version of that.
00:18:03.278 --> 00:18:09.839
And a lot of times they'll what they'll do is they'll rasterize their PDFs so you can't do a control F.
00:18:11.079 --> 00:18:12.440
And they just dump it on you.
00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:17.079
And then like you're looking through photos and you know you're trying to see their photos and they're all saved as PDFs.
00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:22.519
Like, oh man, I know they do this intentionally because they're trying to like drive up the cost on billiable hours.
00:18:22.980 --> 00:18:26.420
What's the absolute worst part of your job?
00:18:26.500 --> 00:18:28.099
Being away from my kids.
00:18:28.740 --> 00:18:31.059
Because a lot of times you can't really plan around...
00:18:31.059 --> 00:18:34.500
Like for example, I just got back from being out of state.
00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:41.798
I missed my son's Cub Scout meeting it was the first Cub Scout meeting of the year where we were gonna sell popcorn and he wanted me to be there.
00:18:41.798 --> 00:18:51.000
But you know, there's an emergency and you know, I just got a call now again to I have to be down in South Florida next week for a few days.
00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:57.640
And so this is part of the job that when duty calls, it's not predictable, but when you get the call, like you have to go.
00:18:57.940 --> 00:19:01.859
You have to go and a lot of times you buy tickets one way 'cause you don't know when you're coming back.
00:19:02.019 --> 00:19:06.659
Especially during what we call the cat season, um, which is catastrophic events.
00:19:06.659 --> 00:19:08.898
You know, like the the earthquake in Colombia.
00:19:08.898 --> 00:19:12.579
You know, I'm still waiting on the call for us to go down there.
00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:14.079
So how long might you be gone?
00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:17.679
It it could be a day or two days or a week. You just don't know.
00:19:19.599 --> 00:19:20.720
And that's tough.
00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:37.339
And and my son, especially when he came to our our headquarters we have photos of, you know, sometimes we do facade inspections and we have to rappel down buildings or hang off a swing stage, which you know, when it's when it's windy and it's hot, it's it's not fun, but it's part of the job.
00:19:37.419 --> 00:19:39.740
You have to rappel down buildings.
00:19:39.740 --> 00:19:43.099
I I had no idea there was like a daredevil part of this job.
00:19:43.039 --> 00:19:43.759
Yeah.
00:19:43.759 --> 00:19:44.160
Yeah.
00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:45.359
I haven't done it yet.
00:19:45.359 --> 00:19:47.920
There's a couple of people in our in our company that do do that.
00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:50.079
I do go off swing stages and booms.
00:19:50.079 --> 00:19:51.759
What's a swing stage?
00:19:51.660 --> 00:19:54.059
It's basically a like a suspended platform.
00:19:54.059 --> 00:19:54.539
Okay.
00:19:54.539 --> 00:20:03.900
You know, sometimes they use it for clean cleaning windows, but you know, when we're doing facade inspections, we'll we'll go off of that from the top of the building, sometimes like a forty story building.
00:20:03.819 --> 00:20:06.859
In New York City we we do a lot of the rappelling stuff.
00:20:06.859 --> 00:20:07.339
Okay.
00:20:07.579 --> 00:20:17.819
But, anyway, so he thinks my son, he's seven, he thinks that's what I'm doing every time I go to work, so he cries and cries he because he thinks I'm gonna get killed.
00:20:18.298 --> 00:20:21.099
He thinks I'm I'm gonna uh an accident's gonna happen.
00:20:21.099 --> 00:20:22.380
Oh poor thing.
00:20:22.380 --> 00:20:25.579
You need to show him the report writing part of your job.
00:20:25.460 --> 00:20:35.940
Well, he he does see that, but he also he'll also see that, you know, like for example in Alabama was I was eighty feet in the air on a boom that was moving a lot, let's just say.
00:20:35.940 --> 00:20:37.779
Uh looking at that facade.
00:20:37.779 --> 00:20:40.579
And I took a selfie when I was up there and sent it to my wife.
00:20:40.579 --> 00:20:43.460
And I'm like, hey, make sure Jorge knows I'm not doing this.
00:20:43.460 --> 00:20:45.380
You know, my son knows I'm not doing this.
00:20:45.740 --> 00:20:51.500
This is a fun job to hear about because it has so many seemingly disconnected parts.
00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:56.859
You have the kind of holistic designish vision of the architect.
00:20:56.839 --> 00:21:04.200
And you have the like hands-on, you know, eyeballs and hands-on a stucco finish detective work.
00:21:04.200 --> 00:21:18.359
And then you have like the analytical work of compiling reports and formatting them And then you have this kind of full combat, you know, facing down an opposing attorney, which is performative and verbal.
00:21:18.359 --> 00:21:23.000
Like it's just a really weird mix of skills that you need to be good at this.
00:21:23.140 --> 00:21:29.380
It's a lot of different things and that's why I fell in love with the profession because it's not sitting in front of a computer all day.
00:21:29.380 --> 00:21:32.019
A lot of it's being out in the field, you know.
00:21:32.019 --> 00:21:39.200
You get to play with a lot of cool tools, you know, you get to fly with the drone or you get to use these fancy moisture meters.
00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:45.920
And you have to build a story because, you know, you you really have to think outside the box, like what could be causing this?
00:21:46.900 --> 00:21:50.900
So, Jorge, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions.
00:21:50.900 --> 00:21:52.099
Here we go.
00:21:52.099 --> 00:21:56.740
What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know?
00:21:56.740 --> 00:21:57.779
And what does it mean?
00:21:58.299 --> 00:21:59.420
Envelope.
00:21:59.420 --> 00:22:01.339
The building envelope.
00:22:01.339 --> 00:22:02.220
Envelope.
00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:02.700
Yes.
00:22:02.700 --> 00:22:06.700
The building envelope is the thing that encapsulates the building.
00:22:06.700 --> 00:22:10.619
The exterior walls, the windows, the doors, the roof.
00:22:10.559 --> 00:22:12.799
That's all part of the envelope, right?
00:22:12.799 --> 00:22:13.279
Okay.
00:22:13.279 --> 00:22:17.200
And fenestration, which is another fancy word of saying doors and windows.
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:20.640
I only know that from the word defenestration.
00:22:21.759 --> 00:22:24.799
But I never thought about what fenestration means.
00:22:24.940 --> 00:22:25.500
Yeah.
00:22:25.500 --> 00:22:30.778
What's the most insulting thing you could say about a forensic architect's work?
00:22:30.778 --> 00:22:33.579
Oh, I I mean about forensic architect.
00:22:33.579 --> 00:22:46.339
Well the the most insulting thing I hear about architects is that all we do is make pretty pictures One anecdote I heard is that an architect was not smart enough to be an engineer, but not creative enough to be an interior designer, so we're somewhere in the middle.
00:22:46.740 --> 00:22:48.099
That's not the case.
00:22:50.740 --> 00:22:52.819
The amount of knowledge that you have to have in order to become a licensed architect.
00:22:52.819 --> 00:22:58.740
It takes an average of ten years for someone who starts out architecture school to become a licensed architect, right?
00:22:58.740 --> 00:23:04.599
You know, there's a lot of all-nighters, you know, there's a plethora of knowledge that you have to digest.
00:23:04.599 --> 00:23:07.880
At least in my day, it was seven day-long exams.
00:23:07.880 --> 00:23:08.440
Whoa.
00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:12.599
And in some states like California, they require an additional exam.
00:23:12.299 --> 00:23:16.700
So it's a lot of examination, a lot of school and architecture school is not cheap.
00:23:17.180 --> 00:23:21.660
What is a tool specific to your profession that you really like using?
00:23:21.819 --> 00:23:23.500
Oh, this is my favorite one.
00:23:23.500 --> 00:23:26.220
It is called the Tramex RWS.
00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:28.940
It is a pinless moisture meter.
00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:30.220
Pinless moisture?
00:23:30.460 --> 00:23:32.539
What does the pinless part mean?
00:23:32.500 --> 00:23:39.859
So a lot of moisture meters have these two electrical probes that will measure the resistance, the electrical impedance between one pin and the other.
00:23:39.859 --> 00:23:40.339
Oh, I see.
00:23:40.500 --> 00:23:44.579
And you know, if it's more conductive, it could be a sign that there's some moisture in in that wall
00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:44.799
Yeah.
00:23:44.799 --> 00:23:55.519
What I like about the the Tramex is that not only is it pinless, so you don't have to destroy anything, you have to poke anything, but it can actually measure moisture on up to four inches into any type of wall assembly.
00:23:55.519 --> 00:24:01.980
So it sends like an electromagnetic pulse from a sender to the receiver and it sees, you know, the difference.
00:24:01.980 --> 00:24:07.740
It's a very expensive, very high tech piece of equipment that looks like it's straight out of the seventies, right?
00:24:07.859 --> 00:24:10.259
It looks like an old fashioned tape recorder.
00:24:10.259 --> 00:24:13.299
Or out of Star Wars, like the original Star Wars movie.
00:24:13.299 --> 00:24:13.779
Yeah.
00:24:13.779 --> 00:24:28.480
It has these like big buttons, but it's a very high-tech piece of equipment and what's great about it is that it can guide you as to where you need to potentially open something up or where you where you need to investigate further without actually having to rip up the whole building.
00:24:28.919 --> 00:24:33.640
What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of a forensic architect?
00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:35.798
The Daubert motion.
00:24:35.798 --> 00:24:36.119
Oh.
00:24:36.859 --> 00:24:46.220
The Daubert motion is something that an opposing attorney can um issue and basically it's undermining your credibility.
00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:53.500
So if they're saying that you are not a credible witness, they can get you thrown off a case as an expert witness, it's a Daubert motion.
00:24:53.500 --> 00:25:06.799
You know, they'll go to the judge and say, hey, this person is not credible because of X, Y, and Z, or they dig up something in your past or they find something in your report that is not credible or is incorrect, they can file a Daubert motion and get you removed from a case.
00:25:06.660 --> 00:25:15.059
Now is this the kind of thing that they try a Hail Mary every case just to see if it'll work, or is it like really reserved for weird, rare instances?
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:23.200
No, sometimes they'll they'll threaten it in a in a case but you know, i they can file it, but if it's not accepted, you know, i it doesn't go anywhere.
00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:34.119
But yeah, if that does happen that stays on your record forever as an expert witness and that could be the death knell for for you as an expert witness because it it undermines your credibility, especially if it's if it's accepted.
00:25:38.559 --> 00:25:40.960
Because now from them on, every opposing attorney is like, "Isn't it true that you were Dauberted?" Or whatever the verb is.
00:25:40.960 --> 00:25:46.240
Yeah, you got removed from a case, you know, a Daubert motion was filed against you and you got removed from a case.
00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:48.880
I mean, have you known anybody that that happened to?
00:25:49.140 --> 00:25:54.259
Personally, no, I've heard people have had it threatened against them, but they never follow through with it.
00:25:54.259 --> 00:25:58.180
Um, because it's it's kind of a high standard to get yourself thrown off a case.
00:25:58.259 --> 00:26:00.339
Um and it usually has to be something egregious.
00:26:00.339 --> 00:26:11.538
You lied on your resume about your uh your past or you know, there there was one case where an expert witness used AI to write his report and he used a free version of Chat GPT.
00:26:11.740 --> 00:26:12.460
Oh man.
00:26:12.460 --> 00:26:13.500
And it was a big case.
00:26:13.500 --> 00:26:19.339
And her prompt was like, hey, write me an expert report where our client has zero culpability.
00:26:19.339 --> 00:26:20.140
Come on.
00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:23.339
That does not put the profession in a good light, does it?
00:26:23.339 --> 00:26:23.740
No.
00:26:24.759 --> 00:26:29.159
What is a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?
00:26:29.319 --> 00:26:32.839
The hollow sounding of stucco or concrete.
00:26:32.839 --> 00:26:44.220
So a lot of times when water gets behind a you know a wall cavity uh or gets behind stucco There's this metal lav that they use to uh adhere stucco to.
00:26:44.220 --> 00:26:46.700
That's just like a small chicken wire mesh
00:26:46.460 --> 00:26:46.859
Okay.
00:26:46.859 --> 00:26:51.819
If water gets in there it starts to rust and when things start to rust they expand, right?
00:26:51.819 --> 00:26:55.819
So it starts to delaminate from the stucco assembly, right?
00:26:55.819 --> 00:27:00.859
So you you sometimes you take a hammer and you do a tap test and you can hear, you know, like a hard sound like...
00:27:03.900 --> 00:27:05.660
it starts to change.
00:27:05.460 --> 00:27:12.339
When you start to change, that's another clue that, you know, water has been um or in concrete as well, you know, with with the rebar.
00:27:12.339 --> 00:27:13.940
It starts to sound hollow.
00:27:14.140 --> 00:27:18.059
Um and then you you can mark that area where you have to open up and investigate further.
00:27:18.059 --> 00:27:26.900
Another sound which is really scary is the the case I was mentioning earlier where You stick your finger through a a a wood column and it disintegrates.
00:27:27.140 --> 00:27:29.380
It's almost like biting into a rice crispy.
00:27:29.380 --> 00:27:31.380
It just falls apart in your hand.
00:27:31.380 --> 00:27:33.460
Oh man, that's a great analogy.
00:27:33.460 --> 00:27:35.380
I can totally imagine that.
00:27:35.299 --> 00:27:38.740
And I can imagine how terrifying it would be to do that.
00:27:38.740 --> 00:27:41.220
Yeah, especially when you were standing underneath it.
00:27:41.940 --> 00:27:46.099
What is an aspect of your work that you consistently savor?
00:27:46.500 --> 00:27:56.900
When you get uh compliments from your attorneys, especially if you have an opposing uh attorney hired you for the next case, but that's more on the business end of things.
00:27:56.900 --> 00:28:06.019
The more spiritual side of things, especially when you're on a plaintiff case, when a client will come and thank you and say how much they appreciate you fixing their building.
00:28:06.019 --> 00:28:11.720
You know, because for a lot of people their buildings are not just a financial investment.
00:28:11.720 --> 00:28:13.559
It's where their families live.
00:28:14.119 --> 00:28:16.359
It's where their kids play.
00:28:16.339 --> 00:28:25.700
And to find out what's causing an issue and to make a building safe and to see the the appreciation that you you'll get sometimes is that's why I do it, you know.
00:28:25.700 --> 00:28:35.000
That's because a lot of times, you know, uh a client will be put in a really bad position by buying a really, you know, really poorly designed, poorly constructed building.
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:36.359
And they're living under this.
00:28:36.359 --> 00:28:43.960
You know, they're living with with the constant fear of, you know, getting sick from the building or the building collapsing or the building, you know, or whatever number of issues it could have.
00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:54.240
But you you coming in and and fixing it and you know making it making it a safe place for people to raise their family, that's always rewarding.
00:29:03.500 --> 00:29:08.539
Jorge McCormack is a forensic architect in Florida.
00:29:09.140 --> 00:29:13.859
So folks, this is the last episode of season one.
00:29:13.859 --> 00:29:17.859
And don't worry, there is a season two coming, more on that next week.
00:29:17.859 --> 00:29:23.380
And yes, for the record, this was a three-year 83 episode season.
00:29:23.740 --> 00:29:29.259
In all that time, we've never had a reflection about AI.
00:29:29.259 --> 00:29:30.940
It's time.
00:29:30.940 --> 00:29:37.660
I believe AI is going to be the single greatest force in our lifetime affecting work.
00:29:37.539 --> 00:29:44.660
And this conversation with Jorge was almost like a trailer for that impact, both the good and bad.
00:29:44.660 --> 00:29:53.799
The bad, well, that guy who got busted for using AI to spin up his report That's the worst case scenario.
00:29:53.799 --> 00:30:04.119
That human beings get so lazy and so dependent that people stop reading and thinking and we just outsource our brains to AI.
00:30:04.679 --> 00:30:16.679
On the other hand, there's promise too, the way Jorge uses AI to sift through 41,000 files dumped on him by the other team, looking for the bits that are important.
00:30:16.839 --> 00:30:19.558
That's pretty magical.
00:30:19.558 --> 00:30:22.359
And then there's what's coming.
00:30:22.359 --> 00:30:32.660
What if an AI could fly its own drone to a building with a pinless moisture detector hooked up to it, would that be good or bad?
00:30:32.660 --> 00:30:45.180
What if the attorney cross-examining Jorge had an AI agent monitoring his testimony in real time to identify little inconsistencies that the lawyer could use to trip him up?
00:30:45.180 --> 00:30:50.380
The point is not to marvel or recoil at the technology.
00:30:50.559 --> 00:30:57.519
For us on this show, it's to assess its effects on how people experience their jobs.
00:30:57.519 --> 00:31:04.700
Because this is a show about what it's like to be people of different professions.
00:31:04.700 --> 00:31:10.539
And for better or worse, those professions are changing right now.
00:31:10.539 --> 00:31:12.619
And we'll be a witness to it.
00:31:14.038 --> 00:31:27.480
Listening for hollow spots in stucco, keeping your cool while lawyers try to rattle you, compiling reports full of defensible facts, and diagnosing the flaws and risks in the spaces that people depend on.
00:31:28.640 --> 00:31:34.960
Folks, that's what it's like to be a forensic architect.
00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:47.839
A shout out To recent Apple Podcast reviewers, we've got Griswold Bookbinder, DonCheetwood, Ob-1, SnowQueen1720, Slimb, looking for comfort, and Nora GSD.
00:31:47.900 --> 00:31:51.579
This episode was produced by Matt Purdy.
00:31:51.579 --> 00:31:52.940
I'm Dan Heath.
00:31:52.940 --> 00:31:54.460
See you soon.
