You just would not believe the things I have caught, and this is working with the very best of the best, and on the most major huge high cost structures They have told me “I’m glad you caught that because the boss wanted me to go ahead” and “if you weren’t here we would have gone ahead with that”, so I am not buying it at all that quality control is moot. Not every day is saving the building, most days are spent facing mocking and ridicule for not really mattering
I know how important most of the inspections are, was not trying to minimize, just saying MANY are way overboard for CYA after it was ruled the cities could be sued for missing things.
Apparently 3” clear does not mean anything to a whole bunch of laborers putting reinforcing into footing trenches... and this is ARIZONA, I have seen people using a jack hammer in the caliche dirt sometimes. These trenches stand up and could be swept out clean half the time. That means they like to try to give me an 8” deep footing when we specify 12” too.