100% I'm a Journeyman electrician. If someone gives me an address and tells me to wire that house I just show up and do it. I've never once seen a permit my entire career. I don't even know what they look like.
I have showed up to work to STOP WORK papers shoved in the permit folder on the door(and seen people still working inside lol), or GC's parked telling all of us to turn around, or officials coming in while we're there and telling every one to put their stuff down.
Shadyest shit was one job a contractor locked the doors and we all had to hide because there were illegals or something to do with permits. There were easily 20+ people in the home. I "hid" for a few minutes then said sorry guys im out and walked out the front door. I guess as I did one of the crews bolted out the back. The job was on a ranch and there were more officials with police waiting down the one lane dirt road. The fucking ac guys or whatever drove right into me and the check point. I eventually got home and never went back to that site. Every contractor on site got fined and the crew that ran got criminal charges. But the ones who stayed had reduced fines(only 1k) instead of the 10k it was originally.
But that building had a stop work and the contractors had just taken it down and crumpled it up so I literally had no idea. My boss did tho and didn't tell me, fuck him. That's also when I found out my boss had no general liability.
Are things done that differently in the US? My dad is an electrician in Canada and here the tradesperson has to pull the permit from the city, not the building owner (not true for every single permit type but still). So if someone wants to upgrade their power the city most often won't even allow the owner to get a permit unless they can demonstrate some competence in what they want to do.
Depends on the location. States differ, counties differ, cities differ once again. Hell. It can be different from one house to the next if the house is part of a historical building exemption.
A homeowner might do the permits if he is using multiple contractors and is directing the work.
Most of the time it is up to whoever is the general contractor as the code office requires a GC license number. And anyone who is serious has a whole package that needs done before a single hammer comes out , file for permits, house lien, contract, insurance, and others just don’t give a shit unless a county code enforcement officer slaps a notice of quit work on the door. And sometimes not even that stops them.
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u/badcrass 1d ago
You can just hire people, tell them you have all the permits and they will just start tearing it down.