City Planner and soon to be Building Official

[taz6984]

Howdy all,

I am a small city urban planner that has been requested to take on the job title of Building Official as well. I am working on taking the CBO exams for the 2012 ICC series and than moving on to Residential and Commercial Insp. & Plans Examiner exams however I would appreciate helpful hints or advice on the exams and the job as a whole.

 

[fatboy]

Welcome to the forum!

I've always thought that it would be challenging wearing both hats, kind of a right-brain/left-brain thing, but I know it is done.

Good luck, and you will find this forum to be a great resource!

 

[cda]

Welcome

Good to see you are able to post

 

[cda]

Hire people that know what a code book looks like

Once that is done, send them to training constantly

Use common sense, and treat everyone the same

 

[mtlogcabin]

Ditto CDA

If your employees don't make you look good then you don't need them

Now if you are a small jurisdiction then reach out on this forum and build relationships with other BO in your area that can and will mentor you along the way.

Buy the commentaries, although they are not code they will give you a good insight into the intent and purpose of a specific code section

Finally join and get involved with http://www.wabo.org/ They are an excellent group within your state.

 

[north star]

~ \ ~ \ ~

taz6984,

Also, ...a hearty Welcome to The Building Codes Forum !

Might I also encourage you to join this Code Forum and to become a Sawhorse

[ i.e. - an active financial supporter ] of this invaluable resource ?

This is THE BEST Code Forum on the internet, ...bar none !

~ / ~ / ~

 

[ICE]

Howdy all,I am a small city urban planner that has been requested to take on the job title of Building Official as well. I am working on taking the CBO exams for the 2012 ICC series and than moving on to Residential and Commercial Insp. & Plans Examiner exams however I would appreciate helpful hints or advice on the exams and the job as a whole.

Are you going to be the plans examiner and inspector?

 

[taz6984]

Merging departments

Are you going to be the plans examiner and inspector?

They are planning for me to be the department head (Building Official & City Planner) and have a deputy (Building Inspector). I will be assisting for vacations, sick time, etc. plus a second set of eyes for plan review. I currently do a lot of plan reviews for infrastructure plans and subdivisions, so not too far off on that area however I have never been an inspector.

I have been tasked with studying for and taking the CBO exams and than moving on as I stated before hand. Most of what I will be doing is Admin in nature but there will be times that I will need to step in and review plans or inspect. While you can look things up, I believe it helps to have been on the job trained.

 

[cda]

You can look things up, problem is the codes are not in English

Suggest you get the commentaries for each of your codes. They kind of explain what a section is trying to say, plus there are pictures

And as suggested join the building code group, so you can gather names and numbers to call when you need help,

Also consider third party plan review when you get a project beyond your staffs knowledge

 

[ICE]

Well taz, we all started somewhere. The usual progression is bottom up. That way, you know a few things when you get to the top.

Your thoughts on plan checking indicate a lack of understanding as to what this is about. If you don't know what you don't know, bad things can happen.