That's true, but I wasn't talking about the inspector, I was responding to DannyBee's comment that he could have been building unsafe houses. We here in this thread all know about the evidence that it was sound, so we don't have the excuse the inspector had (for whatever it's worth) for not knowing the actual structural soundness of the building.

> If the house builder reached out to building engineer to have his house plans and materials approved before the inspection, there would have been no problem in the first place.

Agreed. Whether that excuses the inspector (or the government that employs him), though, depends on the rules in that particular jurisdiction. Some places require stamped plans, or at least stamped plans for anything not using standard materials, others don't. If the rules just say the building has to be structurally sound, then it should be the inspector's job to determine if it is using all reasonable evidence, not just looking for stamps. But that also means the government needs to fund and train inspectors to be able to do that.