Claims Retrospective: Trust but Verify – Relying on Client-Provided Information Can Lead to Claims
Business is booming. Engineers and surveyors across the country are working longer hours to try to meet the greater demand for services. While this is great news for job security and profits, many engineers and surveyors are struggling to keep up with the demand and to keep clients satisfied. There is certainly temptation to rely on convenient sources for information that would usually be obtained elsewhere through greater effort. For example, engineers and surveyors may be tempted to rely on information provided by their clients to the exclusion of other, more reliable sources.
Unfortunately, clients usually have an interest in the project, which may color the information that they provide. Even if clients are not intending to provide false or misleading information, their information is generally not as accurate as a disinterested third parties’ information, such as a municipality’s, might be. Moreover, the best information is that which is verified by independent, trusted testing, surveying, etc.
There has been a recent increase in claims resulting from engineers and surveyors relying upon inaccurate and/or incomplete information provided by clients (or other interested parties). One such typical claim is where the client provided the insured surveyor with previous plats and surveys. The surveyor then relies on the client-provided plats and surveys in completing its survey, only to later discover that the client-provided documents were inaccurate, rending the insured surveyor’s survey inaccurate as well. Unfortunately, by the time the error is discovered, often times, a third-party has already relied on the insured surveyor’s erroneous survey. For example, a third-party has bought the subject property only to find out the boundary lines are not where they expected, or a builder has begun building a structure on the property within an easement or within the required setbacks or even building a structure onto the neighboring property.
However, these types of claims can be avoided if the surveyor cross-checks the information received by the client with the information available from other sources and/or physically locates certain markers in and around the subject property before completing its survey. While this advice may sound obvious, both surveyors and engineers alike have fallen victim to the temptation of taking the shortcut of simply relying on the information provided by their clients (or other interested parties). Unfortunately, the cost of resolving the resulting claim is almost always greater than the time and expense that the engineer or surveyor saved by taking the shortcut.
It is certainly understandable and even desirable that engineers and surveyors build trust with their clients. However, when it comes to information provided by clients (or other parties interested in the project), the engineer or surveyor should “trust but verify.” Indeed, in most scenarios, the clients’ information is probably best used in conjunction with the other information available to the engineer or surveyor, either through other available records or through independent research, testing, analysis, surveying, etc.
