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Should builders permit their own projects? Post-fire LA considers a radical idea

mark handler

mark handler

SAWHORSE
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Oct 25, 2009
Messages
11,897
Location
So. CA
Scary.

I've been in my current position for almost four years, I was in my previous ABO job for five years. In all that time, I don't think I saw a single set of construction documents by a licensed design professional (architect or PE) that was sufficiently error-free that I was willing to approve it on the first submission. And the ones I'm seeing at the current job seem to be, on average, worse than what I saw at the previous job. Which means design professionals are either dumber now than they were a decade ago, or lazier.

My gut says they're lazier. They compete for work based on fees, and too many of them take projects for fees that are grossly inadequate to allow preparing a decent set of construction documents. But the building code doesn't care about their fee structure or their profit margin. The codes require that certain information be provided. The code is, by its own definition, the minimum standard for safe buildings. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask design professionals to provide the minimum information required by the building code.
 
No. God no. At least not without some actual consequences attached.

Some builders and designers would do a good job. I have no doubt about that. In my experience though, a lot more will do a really bad job.

The firm I work for has been around a long time. Long enough that we should be able to submit plans and hardly get any comments back. But no. We've never once, in the years I've worked there, submitted a residential project that didn't have, at best, a dozen or so comments (I say this as someone who doesn't work on residential projects). No architect, contractor, or other design professional I've ever worked with has submitted plans and got few to no comments on residential projects.

And that's in the best of times.

With how rushed everyone is going to be, I can easily see designers and contractors cutting tons of corners to get things done quickly. I'm willing to bet big that there's going to be a lot of unsafe builds and a lot of missed items that is going to cost owners a lot or time and money. With some contractors and design professionals, it'd probably be quicker to go through the regular permit process.

If you can't tell, I have very little faith that most "professionals" will do their job well. In my experience, most "newer" design professionals (licensed or certified in the last decade or so) either hardly know what they're doing or burn through the budget so fast they need to submit incomplete plans to justify more budget / blame the building department. Not all. There are certainly those who do a fantastic job, but I'm willing to bet that it's a minority who are like that.
 
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It would be interesting to be around in 10 or 15 years and see how many defects - work items that didn't comply with code - have resulted in injuries, sicknesses, or deaths. I agree there will be many non-code compliant work items, many of which inevitably don't get fixed before occupancy. But just what will the consequences be?

8 to 10 months for plan check of a single family house does seem unacceptable.
 
In my observations, the more onerous/lengthy the plan check process, the more tempting it is for applicants to just slap together an uncoordinated set and submit ASAP, just to get in the queue at the building department. Most of the unresolved issues are not structural or fire/life safety. They are deferred MEP, energy calcs, lighting controls, ventilation of concealed spaces, and/or plans that have not had clash detection.

I suspect that if you had an optional process with (1) the “carrot” of DPOR’s self certifying their own stamped plans, AND WITH (2) the “stick” proviso that if the city building inspector found a significant code issue in the design the project would be shut down and resubmitted for conventional plan check, the DPORs would be MUCH more careful and deliberate on plans issued for construction.
 
Great idea, self certify junk plans then howl at the inspection were the work has to be ripped out and done over.

Oh that what happens now, marginal plans approved, crappy builder execute their versions, howl at the inspection were the work has to be ripped out and done over.

is the long time frame for permit issuance the building department? or the other approvals necessary. along plan review for a SFD from my office is 2 months, with the occasional outlier that takes 6 monts.
 
The insurance companies are going to refuse coverage or make them pay dearly for coverage. Let's look at this realistically from their point.
  • First, we are going to pay this claim for a total fire loss in an area or region prone to wildfires.
  • Next, we are going to insure a home that did not have the proper inspections or certify that it is built to the current code.
  • In the meantime, changes are coming down the pike for homes in regions like this that will never be implemented.
It is as bad as it sounds.
 
Having read the comments I can see where this is going. If there was just a few more things wrong with it, California won’t be able to resist it. When the politicians get patted on the back they will certainly expand their idea.
 
jar546 said:
The insurance companies are going to refuse coverage or make them pay dearly for coverage. Let's look at this realistically from their point.
  • First, we are going to pay this claim for a total fire loss in an area or region prone to wildfires.
  • Next, we are going to insure a home that did not have the proper inspections or certify that it is built to the current code.
  • In the meantime, changes are coming down the pike for homes in regions like this that will never be implemented.
It is as bad as it sounds.
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By "make them pay dearly" I assume you mean the homeowners -- and I think you're right.

I wonder what professional liability insurers are going to say about design professionals self-certifying construction documents. Professional liability insurance isn't open-ended. Premiums are based on the insured party exercising the ordinary standard of care and performing customary services. Customarily, pretty much everywhere in the country, construction documents are [purportedly] reviewed by a building department before a permit is issued. Even if the building official completely skips the review, he's legally obligated to do it so , in the event of a catastrophe, the design professional's insurance company can still use as a defense that the plans were approved by the building department.

Self-certification? That's a whole new ball game. How many of you are familiar with the CASE Form 101 Statement of Special Inspections? Back in the 1990s when special inspections first found their way into the building codes, there was a big problem. The codes required engineers to write up a statement of special inspections, but nobody had ever done it before. There was no standard of care that the insurance companies could look at for establishing and/or limiting the extent of professional liability insurance. To address this, three structural engineers in Connecticut created a template for a statement of special inspections. They did it under the auspices of the Structural Engineers Coalition of the Connecticut engineers professional society, and the society then donated it to CASE (the Council of American Structural Engineers). With this document having been adopted as a recommended template by a national engineering group, this allowed insurance companies to feel comfortable that there was a baseline for the standard of care in preparing statements of special inspection.

I can foresee a similar gap in coverage for self-certified construction documents.
 
The LA City Council included the following in their motion to study self-certification:
1739934299665.png
Questions for you all, especially those predicting self-certification will be a life-safety disaster.
1. Were you aware that the cities and counties mentioned were already doing self-certification? (And on another thread, I think Chicago was also mentioned.)
2. Do you know if the specifics of their programs?
3. Have you heard of problems arising in these jurisdictions in the time since they implemented their programs?
 
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Yikes said:
The LA City Council included the following in their motion to study self-certification:
View attachment 15161
Questions for you all, especially those predicting self-certification will be a life-safety disaster.
1. Were you aware that the cities and counties mentioned were already doing self-certification? (And on another thread, I think Chicago was also mentioned.)
2. Do k=you know if the specifics of their programs?
3. Have you heard of problems arising in these jurisdictions in the time since they implemented their programs?
Click to expand...

Yeah -- New York City went to self-certification some years back, after cleaning house of all the inspectors who had been on the take left them short-handed. My recollection is that self0certification was a total disaster, and I believe they have abandoned it and gone back to doing plan reviews.
 
There is probably a way to do it, but the issue is that when we don't need it, we don't spend time to set it up. When we need it, we have don't have any time to set it up, so it doesn't run properly.

The way I would approach it would be that professionals have to write code tests to confirm they know basic code for the architypes of buildings they are self-certifying for. The first few plans they submit get a normal plan review. If they all come back clean, then they get to self-certify. However, the self-certified plans will undergo random audits. If there are anything other than a minor error or two, they lose the ability to self certify.
 
tmurray said:
The way I would approach it would be that professionals have to write code tests to confirm they know basic code for the architypes of buildings they are self-certifying for. The first few plans they submit get a normal plan review. If they all come back clean, then they get to self-certify.
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Interesting idea, worth exploring further. Would the code test consist of reviewing a standard test plan to see how many corrections they can identify as compared to similar AHJ plan checkers? Would they be given access to boiler plate correction lists, as AHJ plan checkers often do?
 
tmurray said:
There is probably a way to do it, but the issue is that when we don't need it, we don't spend time to set it up. When we need it, we have don't have any time to set it up, so it doesn't run properly.

The way I would approach it would be that professionals have to write code tests to confirm they know basic code for the architypes of buildings they are self-certifying for. The first few plans they submit get a normal plan review. If they all come back clean, then they get to self-certify. However, the self-certified plans will undergo random audits. If there are anything other than a minor error or two, they lose the ability to self certify.
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I think I just teared up a bit.....
 
Yikes said:
Interesting idea, worth exploring further. Would the code test consist of reviewing a standard test plan to see how many corrections they can identify as compared to similar AHJ plan checkers? Would they be given access to boiler plate correction lists, as AHJ plan checkers often do?
Click to expand...
Honestly, I was just making it up on the spot.

I don't know if I would do practical testing. I can understand why you are considering this approach, since most RPDs rely on drafters to develop significant portions of the plan. I would hope that they would be able to catch code errors on their plans, but this may be slightly lacking since they do have plan checkers doing this as well (even if they don't catch every little thing, someone else will, so they move on to more valuable work).

Personally, I would lean towards having participants look up code requirements and select the appropriate one for the given situation.

1. When I ask a specific question, do they know where to find the answer in the code?
2. When they find the section can they properly read through it to get an answer?
3. Can they take this answer and translate it into real-world requirements?

We would need to focus on the objective of the testing; to confirm code knowledge. This means, our objective would not be to ensure the designer has a specific interpretation about a grey area, so there needs to be a clearly correct answer. We are not testing reading comprehension, so questions need to be worded simply and clearly.
 
Yankee Chronicler said:
Yeah -- New York City went to self-certification some years back, after cleaning house of all the inspectors who had been on the take left them short-handed. My recollection is that self0certification was a total disaster, and I believe they have abandoned it and gone back to doing plan reviews.
Click to expand...
New York seems to still have some sort of self-certification program, but it's limited to Alteration Type-2 and Type-3 small construction projects (link). Doesn't seem like they allow self-certification for ground-up new construction though, at least on my quick search.
 
If a person passed an ICC B3 General Plans Examiner test for residential construction, would you consider that to be enough to self-certify single family residential plans in lieu of a formal plan check?
 
UPDATE: Here is Mayor Bass' latest regarding self-certification of plans: https://files.constantcontact.com/1402d862701/4edfb2d6-70a9-4fb8-8851-0bb21f280d05.pdf
Here's an excerpt of the criteria to self-certify:

9. Participant Requirements. Participating architects in the pilot program must meet all of the criteria listed below.
a. Possess a valid architect's license issued by the State of California.​
b. Successfully complete a test and/or demonstrate knowledge of the applicable California Residential Code as required by LADBS. LADBS will collaborate with the International Code Council (ICC) to create a test and/or a certification program for architects wishing to participate in the program. ​
c. Possess professional liability insurance in an amount to be determined by LADBS in its implementation guidelines.​
d. Agree to being removed from the program at the discretion of LADBS if the architect has made material errors in compliance with the required California Residential Code, as amended by the City of Los Angeles and as set forth in LADBS' implementation guidelines. Participants shall remain subject to inspections and code enforcement activities.​

10. Other Requirements.
a. Structural plans shall be signed and stamped by a structural engineer with a valid license from the State of California.​
b. Energy calculations shall be signed and stamped by an engineer with a valid license from the State of California, as determined by LADBS and as set forth in the implementation guidelines.​
c. An affidavit, to the satisfaction of the City, signed by the architect, structural engineer and the property owner indemnifying the City. This affidavit shall be recorded with the County Recorder’s office. A copy of the recorded affidavit shall be provided to LADBS prior to building permit issuance.​
d. Other requirements as deemed necessary by LADBS.​
 
Why is CA so slow. In my state the building department is required to pass or deny a permit within 15 business days and a stamped plan in 5 days or they are automatically deemed approved.
 
Mr. Inspector said:
Why is CA so slow. In my state the building department is required to pass or deny a permit within 15 business days and a stamped plan in 5 days or they are automatically deemed approved.
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We do a better job of it. That takes more time. When you rush, you miss stuff.
 
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