He didn’t look too hard which makes him incompetent. 
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Years ago we had many electrical inspectors in the state that did drive by inspections. They would look at the name on the permit and say that guy does quality work and just sign off without even looking or getting out of the car. Eventually the state starting doing follow up inspections on the alleged drive by inspectors and those that they caught were censured.
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As they should be…censured I mean.
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Here in GA, some counties allow builders to use 3rd party engineering firms to perform the inspections.
Of course, this relationship with the builder would be very important to the engineering firm because they want the business. Much like HI and Realtor relationships, the incentive to go soft on the builder is built in.
Anecdotally, I see issues in the field that in my opinion should never have been signed off. And this appears to be increasing with this 3rd party system.
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I agree, but what happens in the case of a newly constructed home like in the OP when an HI finds a blatant violation?
I actually ran into an AHJ that came into a new build while I was there and i asked him if he was going to take the dead front off and would he just leave it off so i can take a look he said NO that he was covering 3 counties and did not have time to remove the cover. 
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Nothing, unless the buyer has big intentions to hold all responsible accountable. Most just want to move in as well protect their non-refundable earnest money. The builders have terrible one sided contracts which put the buyer at a massive disadvantage.
Furthermore, most new home buyers use the “on-site agent” and do not have buyer’s agent representation. A buyer’s agent worth their salt could assist in protecting the buyer interest.
A buyer could contact the AHJ for further review, who knows how they will be received?
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That sucks. Now when these people go to sell the house it may cost them money that they never should have spent.
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Yep or even killed or injured. Collectively, if we had all the inspectors here who perform new construction inspections take the time to post significant safety issues that were “signed off” by local AHJ’s we would have a very long and ongoing thread of WTF’s.
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I was inspecting a fixer-upper. The electrician was finishing when I walked up. I immediately saw the double-lugged neutrals and pointed it out. The electrician tells me that the Denver city inspector had just signed off on the box. I just stared at him and he said he’d fix it.
Then the rest of the story…he told me that the inspector told him that normally, Denver has three electrical inspectors working. But one was on vacation and the other one just had an emergency appendectomy, and he was the only electrical inspector for all of Denver for the rest of the week. He was buried. I’ll bet similar things are common occurrences everywhere.
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Saw this again today on a brand new home. The service panel at the exterior, and the distribution panel backs up against it in the garage, but it had the solid EGC.
Could you provide the code for that? Does this still apply when its just backed up to the other side of the wall?
In Texas this is very common along with AHJ’s also using a third party company to perform their function as well. Instead of one fox guarding the hen house you have a whole family of foxes waiting for the hens to appear!! IMO this arrangement is a conflict of interest in the worst way since in Texas the impetus is mostly about “Get it built so we can tax it” rather than get it built safely!
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I let my clients know they should go to the AHJ and raise their concerns if the Builder refuses to handle an obvious and important issue. Had plenty do just that and the AHJ’s try to blow them off. Just recently had a client who did this as the Build Supervisor refused to handle significant issues and the Builder cancelled the contract on the buyer because they exercised that right. Client was relieved though as they were very intelligent and understood fully the potential severity of the issues (not just one but many) and would have forever wondered when the hammer might drop after they closed.
There are only three people that can get an issue corrected. One is the Builder and if the Build supervisor is good they will and my client’s have had it happen plenty. The other is the AHJ who can force the Builder to comply. The last is the buyer who has a contract with the Builder to perform.
The HI has absolutely no power or influence to have an issue corrected and can only arm the Buyer to handle the situation themselves. Any HI who tries to step between the Buyer/Builder or Buyer/AHJ is asking for a load of hurt!! We do have some here who claim to be “The Buyer’s Advocate” and they will learn soon enough how badly that works out!
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I wanted to clear up some confusion about this quote from Daniel. The first part of my response was truncated so it appears that I stated that solid copper EGC’s cannot be installed in raceways. That is not true they can be installed in raceways in sizes up to #10 copper. #8 and large copper conductors in raceways are required to be stranded {310.3(C)}. My original statement was in regard to the first photo (below) in the OP where I stated "I agree #4/0 Al minimum and the solid copper EGC’s cannot be installed in a raceway. I was directly referring to the bare, solid, EGC’s run with the feeder conductors. Sorry for the confusion.
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I’m still a little confused, haha.
So my most recent pic above is also incorrect then?
I’m thinking maybe my area hasn’t adopted that code, I saw another one today on new construction