Gregory J Tierney, PE

I would not recommend hiring Greg Tierney as a structural engineer to visit and examine your house. My experience with him was frustrating, lengthy, and poor quality. My biggest regret with our new house is that we hired Greg Tierney to be the structural engineer.
Our home inspector found a few concerning issues in the crawl space with our piers and recommended we get an inspection by a structural engineer. I found Greg Tierney recommended online and confirmed he was a licensed NC engineer. His rate was $ 425 compared to $ 450 for a couple other engineers, so I decided to go with him. What a big mistake. The $ 25 savings was not worth the shoddy work, headache, and frustration of dealing with him.
To start with, he did not take any pictures of the crawl space and piers. My realtor questioned him about this as she’s never met an engineer who didn’t take any photos. He said the layout was «easy» and he had sketched it out. He also said that he would provide a diagram to help the seller figure out what repairs were needed and where. He said he’d have the report done by Monday (he inspected on a Thursday). I took time off work to make sure I could deliver a check to him and get our report quickly as closing was only a few weeks away.
Monday came and no report, I emailed him and he said due to the weather forecast he had to shift all his inspections to Monday and was out of the office. He’d get the report to be by Tuesday. Tuesday came and no report. Wednesday came and no report. I called him Wednesday afternoon and he said «I’ve been very busy and people like you are calling me asking for things!» I said «Yes, I understand. You told me you would have the report by Monday and I was patient and understanding when it didn’t happen on Monday. Or Tuesday. And now it’s Wednesday. I took time off work to come by and pay you because I respected your time.»
He sent me the report a bit later, only text and with no sketch or diagram. He didn’t even have the right name on the report, it was addressed to «Mrs. Compton.» I’m not Mrs. Compton. I asked him to correct my name and include a diagram. He argued with me about it and said for the «low rate» he charged me, he usually didn’t include diagrams. He didn’t mention this to me when he quoted the rate nor when he told me and my realtor he would include a diagram seeing how he didn’t take any pictures. I told him all this and that his rate was not that low.
He sent me a diagram a few hours later. I gave the report and diagram to the seller only to find out that Greg Tierney had mislabeled the «easy» piers and his report and diagram was off. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t take pictures!
Long story short (yes, there’s even more), it took another week to get him to come out and identify the correct piers that needed fixing. No updated report was provided so I paid $ 325 for an incorrect, mislabeled report. Another two weeks of numerous calls and emails to get him to come out and re-​inspect the fixes that the seller had made (another $ 275 fee). Eventually I had to ask my realtor to help me as he seemed to respond more to her, maybe out of fear of being earning a justified poor reputation in the realtor circles.
TL;DR: AVOID GREG TIERNEY, he will be more of a problem than help during the already stressful process of buying a house.