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TRANSACTIONS PENNONI EXPANDS IN FLORIDA WITH KEMPTON RINARD Pennoni, a multidisciplinary consulting engineering firm headquartered in Philadelphia, announced the recent acquisition of certain assets of Kempton Rinard, Inc. in Tampa, Florida. Pennoni welcomes the staff and the group will be working as the Kempton Rinard Division of Pennoni. “As we continue to serve public and private clients in the Tampa Bay area, we are delighted to offer an expanded range of service offerings. The addition of Kempton Rinard will allow us to have a greater reach in the community, and we are excited for the opportunities of growth for our clients and newly
expanded staff,” says Brian Diehl, PE, regional vice president. Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, Kempton Rinard provides landscape architectural and civil engineering services for multi-faceted corporate, institutional, municipal and governmental design projects throughout the Southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean. “Tampa is a natural extension for Pennoni,” said David DeLizza, president and CEO at Pennoni. “With our existing offices in Clearwater and Winter Haven, the new location allows us to expand our presence in the Tampa Bay area. The addition of Kempton Rinard adds
landscape architecture to our capabilities and expands our civil engineering expertise in the region.” The new Tampa, Florida office is located at 3242 Henderson Blvd. Suite 200, Tampa, FL 33609. As a multidisciplinary consulting engineering firm founded more than five decades ago, Pennoni approaches engineering challenges from a wider spectrum of angles than most, from land development to energy management. Pennoni’s combination of talent and experience generates unprecedented solutions for diverse and iconic projects around the globe.
to address conditions that could have been reasonably foreseeable and could lead to injury or damage. How do you balance the potential responsibility to design to something more than the code against your client’s desire to build the most cost-effective project? And what can be done to protect yourself? There are no absolute protections, but communication and documentation can help. Discuss with your client what potential climate change impacts they might want to consider. Be sure to contemporaneously document these discussions with specificity. Explain to the client that design firms cannot simply rely on codes and standards to meet their professional obligation to design for public health, safety, and welfare and that you are bound to consider the well-being of users and the community along with the client’s specific financial interests. In addition to the informed consent documentation outlined above, you might also include language in your contract to reduce your professional exposure. Unfortunately, while waivers of claims and limitations of liability from clients can be helpful, the largest claims in these post-event scenarios can come from third parties. An indemnification by the client for third-party claims could help address this exposure if the client is solvent or insured when claims are made. Admittedly, however, these types of agreements may be difficult to negotiate. A restriction of third-party beneficiaries could likewise be beneficial and may be easier to negotiate. In closing, the best way to protect yourself may simply be to be aware of the potential exposure, and to consider and discuss with your client the possible future risks that could be caused by climate change. Adapt the design if your client will agree with your recommendations and document the critical discussions as they occur. Analyze to whom your primary exposure might be and do your best to negotiate terms and conditions that will protect your firm from future claims. Lauren Rhodes Martin is a risk manager and claims specialist at Ames & Gough. She can be reached at lmartin@amesgough. com.
LAUREN RHODES MARTIN, from page 10
The case was brought on behalf of hundreds of homeowners by a well-known, very capable plaintiff’s law firm in a jurisdiction where nearly everyone on the jury would have suffered similar losses in the storm. The Court refused to dismiss the lawsuit. In light of the cost of continuing the litigation, as well as the real possibility that there would be an adverse verdict and that the potential exposure would be vastly in excess of available insurance, the case was settled despite the extremely questionable liability. This illustration of a climate-related matter that led to a lawsuit was an actual example, but it’s not hard to envision lawsuits relating to wind loading, fire protection, excessive heat, unusual cold and flooding, and other circumstances that in the past the court may have considered an “Act of God.” What, if anything, can be done to avoid what may seem unavoidable? “How do you balance the potential responsibility to design to something more than the code against your client’s desire to build the most cost-effective project? And what can be done to protect yourself?” We know that the standard of care for a design professional is a duty to exercise the degree of learning and skill ordinarily possessed by a similarly situated design professional practicing in the same or similar locality and under similar circumstances. Additionally, the first tenet of nearly every professional design license is the duty to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. As natural disasters continue to increase in frequency and severity, so will the potential exposure to the design community. This risk is significantly greater in areas where building codes are insufficient. Codes are the minimum design requirements, so even if code requirements are satisfied, the standard of care may render parties liable for not designing
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THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 9, 2023, ISSUE 1471
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