The California Building Code Makes Everything More Expensive

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The California Building Code Makes Everything More Expensive
http://thebaycitybeacon.com/32740/2...building-code-makes-everything-more-expensive
A combination of political intrigue, seismic safety, and local bureaucracy makes the San Francisco Bay Area one of the most complicated and expensive places to build in the world. At the center of it all: the California Building Code.
The California Building Code, with an updated version coming into effect this past January, is essential for ensuring health and safety standards in earthquake country. It’s also key to understanding the often-vexing relationship between construction and financial viability.

The code covers aspects from seismic safety to energy efficiency, and just about everything in between. Like any legal document, it does not exist in a vacuum. Overlapping regulatory bodies implement it at the state and local level, primarily to ensure structural safety and accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Interest groups in various sectors lobby to influence updates to the International Building Code (IBC), which is later incorporated into amendments to Title 24 of the California Regulatory Code, issued every three to four years. It’s a document driven as much by politics as by academic research.

Few builders object to its myriad requirements, but rather to the politics of it all - stringent design guidelines and unpredictable local implementation isolate California’s construction trades from innovation in the global market. When renowned architect Stanley Stainowitz sounded off to the San Francisco Chronicle about “obstruction” in the city’s planning department, he struck a nerve that resonated with many building industry professionals (while also drawing a strong rebuke from the department itself).

The question has extended much further than the planning phase. With construction costs reaching up to $800,000 for every new unit in San Francisco, local governments are increasingly strained to meet the dire need for affordable housing in the country’s most expensive urban cores. Is the staggering cost of housing in the city due to ballooning regulatory costs, as some research has claimed?

Mark Hogan, an architect at Open Scope Studio, took his skepticism much further. “It is too damn long,” he said of the state building code. “The United States has a legal culture of trying to legislate through every possible scenario, and you end up with less innovation as a result.”

There is at least some research corroborating Mr. Hogan’s claim: a survey by the McKinsey Global Institute found that the construction industry was generally outpaced by overall economic growth by at least 75%, making infrastructure demand harder to meet. The survey describes a “highly fragmented” industry that is “extensively regulated, very dependent on public-sector demand, and highly cyclical. Informality and sometimes corruption distort the market.”

There is at least some research corroborating Mr. Hogan’s claim: a survey by the McKinsey Global Institute found that the construction industry was generally outpaced by overall economic growth by at least 75%, making infrastructure demand harder to meet. The survey describes a “highly fragmented” industry that is “extensively regulated, very dependent on public-sector demand, and highly cyclical. Informality and sometimes corruption distort the market.”

 

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One might expect a developer like Panoramic Interests, which boasts of cutting construction costs by up to 60% with prefabricated modular construction, to share this frustration with the state building code. However, Zac Shore, Project Manager at Panoramic, put it thus: “We live in close proximity to two of the world’s major fault lines. For seismic safety, a long and complicated code isn’t a bad thing.”

Mr. Shore did not see the content of code itself as particularly detrimental to innovation. He was even welcoming of new requirements for rooftop solar panels, which many builders view as unnecessary and costly for dense development in areas where driving a car is unnecessary. Instead, local policy implementation was a greater hurdle.

“When we submitted plans for the same project, both to HCD [The California Department Housing and Community Development] and the City of Berkeley, the city didn’t get back to us for nine months,” Shore said. “HCD cleared our project in a week and a half.”

While HCD and many small municipalities hire out-of-state contractors to review code compliance for new project applications, cities like San Francisco often do this work in-house. Kirk Means, Secretary to the Department of Building Inspection’s Code Advisory Committee, described the state-to-local comparison as “apples and oranges,” because the city deals with site-specific issues that HCD might not. Lily Madjus, the Department’s Communications Director, said the plan check process can take anywhere from weeks to an hour with over-the-counter applications.

“I wish that process would be expedited,” said Sam Moss, director of the nonprofit Mission Housing Development Corporation. “We already get streamlined, because we build affordable housing—but there are landlords who would upgrade their older buildings to be up to code if we incentivized that work, instead of making it seem like a punishment.”

The difference is in the politics. Jeff Brinks, a structural engineer at DCI Engineers in San Francisco, put it thus: “local staff understands the political climate and knows what their leaders want. As opposed to saying ‘that’s wrong, go back and do it again,’ a city that actually wants more development may say, ‘how can we work to make this better?’”

Mr. Brinks noted that many projects, typically high-rise buildings, opt for Performance Based Design Review: rather than following the prescriptive mandates of the state building code, these developments are designed to meet specific performance metrics such as seismic load or energy efficiency.

Industry professionals are more focused on reforming the California Building Code to allow for cost-cutting, energy-efficient materials to enter the market, namely Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT). Buildings constructed with factory-made CLT panels, with layers of thick wooden beams crossed perpendicularly and glued together, can take advantage of the lower costs and smaller carbon footprint of wood construction while achieving the height and density normally reserved for concrete and steel construction.

While the International Building Code now allows for CLT to be used in Heavy Timber construction, the California Building Code only allows it in interior structural support – i.e. floors, ceilings, support beams. This essentially defeats the purpose of CLT replacing more expensive concrete and steel construction for structures above 8 stories high, currently mandated by fire safety codes. Because a fire-truck ladder can typically only reach 75’ at its highest point, building any taller can incur additional costs of up to $60 per square foot.

“It doesn’t make economic sense yet,” Mr. Brinks said on the CLT issue. “It’s not allowed for what we’d like to use it for, namely podium structures and shear wall.”

Though widely used in Europe, CLT is still largely unviable in the domestic market due to a lack of manufacturers, but innovation is booming in the Pacific Northwest, due largely to competitive grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture intended to jump-start the timber industry. Seattle recently amended its building code to allow CLT; in Portland, a 12-story building made entirely of CLT panels is nearing completion.

While largely occurring out of the public eye, experts speculate that lobbying from the concrete industry may be hamstringing regulatory support for the fledgling CLT industry. But overall, industry professionals are optimistic that the next cycle of code updates will bring major changes.

“We need to go taller,” said Susan Jones, an architect at the Seattle-based firm Atelier Jones who advises on IBC updates. “The new code may allow for structures of up to 20, even 24 stories for CLT buildings. That’s huge,” she added. “This industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and I’m thrilled to be working on the cutting edge.”