Piercing in Halox cans - Who is liable for that?

Hi!

We are building with a general contractor and have separated out the electrical trade because the general contractor's electrician does not offer KNX.

So far so good.

The general contractor's site manager was unable to arrange an appointment with the electrician to lay pipes in the ground floor ceiling before the concrete slab was poured. They then agreed by phone that the electrician would simply drill through the ceiling into the Halox boxes. The site manager indicated he saw no problem with this.

However, he has so far failed to provide the written approval requested by the electrician for the drilling process. The ceiling is supposed to be concreted tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I only just learned from the electrician that the written approval is not yet available. He indicated to me that he will not perform any drilling without such approval. It is too risky for me to allow the concreting to proceed tomorrow without written approval. A verbal agreement with the electrician or with me is not worth anything in this case.

Now my question:
How should it be viewed if Halox boxes are drilled through in the concrete ceiling? Is it risky? Is it correct for the electrician to want this approval in writing? I think this is reasonable on his part.

How would you proceed here? If they pour the concrete tomorrow and still do not provide approval, I will be the one at fault later! I have just emailed the general contractor again, stating that written approval must definitely be provided before the concreting begins and otherwise no concreting can take place. Whether this will help on a Sunday, given that the work is supposed to begin at 8 a.m. tomorrow, is a big question. On the other hand, the shell builder who is supposed to carry out the work tomorrow is not my contracting partner and legally I can hardly prevent him from starting work at 8 a.m. (contract for work and services). At least in legal terms such as potential damages for reserved manpower, machinery, etc., I do not know how this would affect things.

Does anyone have an idea how I should best proceed here?

In any case, I need to get more involved in all the processes, follow up much more, get much more and also more short-term written confirmations. It started off quite well but now 2-3 such things have already occurred.... (among other things we had an "experience" during the civil engineering work and the related coordination/communication).

sorry but is it already concreted or is it still going to be concreted. I don't quite get it right now. if it is not concreted yet why does the electrician want to drill through the ceiling??

if it is not concreted yet then he should just put a styrofoam block on the halox boxes before concreting then he doesn't have to drill and also knows where the boxes are.

if it is already concreted then he should just drill through the halox boxes from underneath.

honestly I don't understand the electrician's problem right now. a few holes in a reinforced concrete ceiling have not caused a house to collapse and if he's not doing 100mm core drillings the statics of the ceiling don't really care either.

sorry but is it already concreted or will it be concreted later.

No, I wrote that it should happen tomorrow morning.

if it is not yet concreted, why does the electrician want to drill through the ceiling??

He doesn’t want to. Rather, there is a coordination problem here. The general contractor’s site manager recently tried to request the electrician with half a day's notice to lay the cables before concreting. He couldn’t arrange that on such short notice, which I understand well, because what kind of operation would he have if everyone there was just on call all the time. That requires some planning. I don’t blame him for that – rather the general contractor. In any case, they then agreed by phone that he would drill through the ceiling if (timewise) it couldn’t be done otherwise. He would still do that. The problem is only that he has not received the written approval requested from the general contractor, which he asked for by email 10 days ago. Unfortunately, I only found out today. And he says that for liability reasons he will not drill through the concrete ceiling into the boxes without that.

I also have to explain that the date for the concreting has been postponed several times. All the more annoying that communication between the general contractor and the electrician regarding this was not done properly and he was not given the chance to work beforehand as originally planned. But that is all in the past now and I have to decide in the here and now.

honestly I don’t understand the electrician’s problem right now. A few holes in a reinforced concrete ceiling have not brought down a house and unless he’s doing 100mm core drillings, it’s pretty much irrelevant to the ceiling’s statics.

He says he needs approval for liability reasons and otherwise will not drill through. I can understand him to some extent. The GCs seem to have their own electricians who can jump in at a moment’s notice, but some seem to have difficulties with the required lead time / coordination effort with external craftsmen. I really don’t blame the electrician. He is always very accommodating, answers promptly, and works out clarifications in consultation with me... I really can’t say anything negative.


The site manager did suggest to him to drill through. That’s not a problem. He just wants it in writing. Otherwise, the general contractor could have reacted within the last 10 days and communicated that they might not grant such approval. Very annoying.

I still don't understand the problem. Why does he need a clearance?? What is he supposed to be liable for?? The Halox box sticks out at least 5-8 cm from the filigree ceiling above. He should just attach a 5x5 cm Styrofoam cube to it, then he doesn't have to drill anything and knows where the box is. The statics of the ceiling are not affected because above the Halox box there is nothing but a little bit of concrete, so where is the problem with drilling a hole there??

And if he doesn't want to do that, he should drill a hole into the Halox box on top or sideways and insert a conduit that then sticks out 10 cm above the finished concreted ceiling. Then they will concrete the conduit in and that's that. And he can still do this tomorrow morning before they pour the concrete, it takes a quarter of an hour....

and he can still do that tomorrow morning before they start pouring the concrete, that takes about fifteen minutes....

The problem is the time factor. He cannot come tomorrow morning.

Approval to drill through the ceiling. Is the electrician bored? Does he also need a note to pick his nose? No hard feelings, wiring through the ceiling by drilling is totally normal. There's nothing special about it. If it doesn't work with a conduit, then just like that. Your general contractor will learn from the incident and refuse to remove the electrical installations for the next customer.