Building rules illegal, says RTC

The Manila Regional Trial Court has prohibited Public Works and Highways Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane and building officials or district engineers from implementing two provisions of the implementing rules of the National Building Code, which deprived civil engineers the right to prepare, sign and seal plans and specifications of buildings, structures and infrastructures for the issuance of building permits.

The Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers (PICE) and civil engineer-legal counsel Leo Cleto Gamolo filed the case on behalf of some 100,000 licensed engineers in the country who would be ousted from their jobs.

The two provisions of the new rules dropped civil engineers from the work of preparing, signing and sealing building plans and specifications of buildings covering map or location, site development, perspective, floors, elevations, sections, ceilings, doors and windows, schedule of finishes, and other elements. The court order allows the civil engineers to keep on with their professional work in accordance with the National Building Code and the Civil Engineering Law.

The PICE decried that the provisions granted architects "the exclusive right" to do the work.

Judge Marino dela Cruz Jr. said both parties "are one that one cannot be deprived of the right to work and the right to make a living because these rights are property rights. It is not disputed that before the issuance of the questioned rules, petitioners as civil engineers were exercising the rights pursuant to RA 544 (Civil Engineering Law) and PD 1096 (National Building Code) which the subject IRR would now remove from them."

The judge also pointed out: "It is a legal truism that ‘the spring cannot rise higher than its source.’ At this stage of the proceedings, it would appear that the new IRR goes beyond the laws it seeks to implement."

The two questioned provisions of the revised implementing rules of the NBC, approved by then Acting Secretary Soriquez in October last year, before the appointment of Ebdane.

The National Building Code (PD 1096), the PICE said, expressly provides that plans and specifications required for the issuance of a building permit may be "prepared, signed and sealed by a duly-licensed architect or civil engineer."

The Civil Engineering Law, PICE said, also provides that the practice of civil engineering includes preparation of plans, specifications, estimates, erection, installation and supervision of the construction of streets, bridges, highways, railroads, airports and hangars, port works, canals, river and shore improvements, lighthouses, and dry docks, buildings, fixed structures and tunnels.

The petition stressed that the implementing rules and regulations cannot amend or vary the laws promulgated by Congress, thus the new rules violated the NBC, the very law the rules were supposed to implement. Cited were Supreme Court decisions that underscored this legal point.

"The direct consequence of the void provisions is to deprive thousands of civil engineers of their right to earn a livelihood which has been vested upon them for more than half a century now," PICE said.

PICE invoked the constitutional right of civil engineers to equal protection of the law. While the new IRR recognizes the overlapping of functions between architects and interior designers, it said, there is no similar recognition in connection with the overlapping of functions between civil engineers and architects.

The PICE stated: "Great and irreparable injury will be sustained by thousands of civil engineers, if the void IRR is implemented. The provisions would unduly deprive the more than 100,000 PICE members of their means of livelihood and the public would also suffer for being deprived of the services of civil engineers.