A building boom spawned by what could be a new round of economic expansion might herald clear sailing for general contractors, electrical contractors, and other subs that bring construction projects to life. But the sheer pace of construction starts may also signal gale warnings in an important complementary element of building projects: the inspection phase.
In parts of the country where construction is at a breakneck pace, there’s talk of building inspection departments of cities and other jurisdictions scrambling to keep up with demand. In some places, they’re evidently failing — constrained by too few inspectors and a surge in requests for electrical/mechanical/plumbing and related official inspections. The result is delays that run counter to policy and impose costs on builders, contractors, and other stakeholders.
“My performance goal is to have 90% of inspection requests handled within 24 hours, but we’re now operating at about 33% on time (as of mid-June),” says Rich Anderson, division manager for inspections for the city of Austin, Texas, a locale where construction (notably residential) is surging, and inspections (particularly electrical) have been backing up.
Across Florida, municipal building departments are reportedly having varying degrees of trouble making timely site visits.
“I hear there are significant delays in certain areas of the state — including up to 30 days in Osceola County possibly — and that moratoriums have even been put on issuing new permits in some places,” says Doug Wise, immediate past president of the Building Officials Association of Florida.
Additionally, populous areas of other states where building is frenetic, such as those in the Northeast and Southwest, may also be experiencing slowdowns.
In the short run, the problem of current inspection backlogs might prove to be self-correcting; likely pauses may allow jurisdictions to catch up at some point, and when construction starts revert to the norm, balance will return.
While they’re occurring, though, concerns over the costs the delays exact linger. Their ripple effects can cause the work of other trades to slow and put an entire construction project behind schedule and over budget. Not to mention overworked, hurried inspectors might miss code and standards violations, which themselves may be more prevalent because workers, too, are under the gun.
It might also be true that current inspection delays are only the tip of the iceberg. They may be early evidence of brewing trouble in the inspector ranks, which are growing older and may be susceptible to thinning due to a combination of austere budgets, stiff qualification requirements, and waning interest in the profession. Should inspectors become harder to find and hire, inspection backlogs could grow longer and more routine. And a prolonged construction boom — a long shot given the growing odds of a recession but not far-fetched if an improving economic backdrop kicks growth into higher gear — would throw the problem into sharper relief.
Delays mount
But this issue is real, today, for cities where development is surging, like Austin. For the last several months, the backlog in residential inspections has been growing as housing starts and multi-family construction have surged. Anderson says the city’s 15 full-time electrical inspectors, who are also tasked with performing both residential and commercial inspections, are trying to adapt by working overtime and routing themselves more efficiently on daily rounds to squeeze in more inspections.
“I’m $19,000 over-budget on overtime for residential, and $25,000 over on commercial, for a fiscal year that ends October 1,” Anderson notes.
To further address the staffing problem, the Austin department continues to submit requests to fund additions to the inspection staff, to little avail. But it did recently score a win: first-ever approval to post four temporary electrical inspector positions. Filling them would help put more inspectors into the field relatively quickly, he says, but perhaps not in time to deal with the current crunch.
“By the time we get them hired and trained, it could be six months before we feel any impact,” Anderson says, adding it’s a challenge to hire temporary workers in a period of low unemployment.
At the same time, Austin is trying to forecast its inspection staff needs longer term and act accordingly. Over time, more inspectors will likely be needed, Anderson says, but challenges loom because a quickening exodus of older inspectors is expected, as is difficulty finding people interested in taking their jobs.
To help address that, the city’s electric board (an oversight panel) has been mulling changes to qualifying standards that prospective inspectors would have to meet. Licensing, certification, and length of time working in the field would be relaxed some in a bid to better target and appeal to likely applicants. And a key by-product of those changes might be an expansion of “multi-hat” inspector duties beyond mechanical, plumbing, and general building to include electrical, a move that could have the effect of streamlining the inspection process and reducing delays.
“From a major high-rise being wired down to a simple little home bath remodel, we now have to wait for a master electrician to show up,” he says. “The question we’re asking is how much more efficient can we be if we’re able to put a true combination inspector on projects, especially smaller ones.”
Losing experience
Finding inspectors qualified to do full mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) inspections may prove challenging. The pool of candidates qualified to do combination inspection work has probably shrunk even more than that for single-discipline work. Wise, the Florida building officials group executive, says Palm Beach County, Fla., where he’s employed as building division director, has lost a half dozen multi-hat inspectors over time.
“Now, with more retirements and tougher state licensing requirements, there are fewer people with four licenses out there,” he says.
Attrition continues to siphon experience and capabilities from that county’s building office. Wise says the division needs to fill about a half-dozen inspector/plans examiner vacancies, some of which have been open since January 2017, to be at full strength. Additionally, the position of chief electrical inspector has gone unfilled for months. But Wise has been able to stay a step ahead of demand for inspections, though less so for plan approvals and permitting, by using services provided by five outside vendors. City-approved third-party inspectors and reviewers are supplementing city staff, he says, enabling the department to mostly manage through the manpower shortage.
“Sometimes it’s a challenge to get inspections done by the next business day, and getting an electrical permit can be challenging because we don’t have enough plan examiners,” says Wise. “There are a lot of people trying to get back-up generators in place, for instance, and that’s creating some problems for our electrical staff. We need a full complement of people, and an electrical chief is critical.”
Inspection staffs are also under varying amounts of time pressure in parts of the country that may not exactly be boom areas. Donny Cook, chief electrical inspector for Shelby County, Ala., says he and his two inspectors are logging a lot of “windshield time” traversing the 800-square-mile county. Construction is in high gear in the county, but inspectors are meeting the goal of providing inspections within two working days, he says. But in metro areas north of the county, around Birmingham, the wait time is more like three or four days, he’s heard.
Cooks says there’s little that small jurisdictions like his can do to speed up inspections in periods of peaking demand. They have far less hiring flexibility than larger ones, meaning they must make do with staffs that won’t be excessively idle in normal or slow periods. But when development peaks, he says, they must scramble, but also be extra vigilant, which can add to the time needed for inspections.
“When you get a big swing in the economy, contractors might not have the luxury of selecting the best, most qualified workers,” he says. “If at every stop you make you have to write up a correction notice about multiple items that need to be fixed by someone who didn’t know what they were doing in the first place and then make a return inspection trip, that compounds the problem.”
Quality at risk?
But it’s also conceivable that stretched resources could produce substandard inspection work. Overworked inspectors trying to catch up, the loss of highly experienced professionals, and new hires of rookie inspectors from a thin crop of top-tier candidates might produce situations where more violations slip through. It’s an unlikely scenario, at least on a grand scale, but worth contemplating during periods of frantic work, some say.
“We work hard to make sure inspectors are competent and things we inspect and review are safe, but some days it’s a challenge to cover all of those bases,” Wise says. “It’s conceivable that things might be approved that should not be because mistakes can happen. But we’ve never sent anyone out there that we didn’t think is competent.”
Dave Clements, chief executive of the International Association of Electrical Inspectors (IAEI), agrees that heavy workloads could pose a threat to consistently thorough inspections. Time on site is a key variable, and, if inspectors are hurried, things could be missed. Clements also worries that stirrings in some jurisdictions to move to risk-based inspections as a way of improving inspection efficiency could further erode inspection integrity.
In Austin, Anderson says, inspectors are likely practicing even more vigilance, overcompensating for a lack of attention to detail that could arise in a time-pressured environment. And they’re not straying from their mission of trying to engage with contractors.
“There are only so many hours in a day and only so much work that can be done, but our inspectors are committed to continue acting as not only enforcers, but as educators as well,” he says. “Explaining the ‘why’ takes time, but we want to be partners with them.”
That’s the approach long taken by inspectors with Middle Department Inspection Agency (MDIA), Conshohocken, Pa., a private electrical inspections provider serving contractors in six mid-Atlantic states, one that hasn’t been compromised in the current rush of business, says Michal Hofkin, senior electrical inspector. MDIA inspectors continue taking the time necessary to inspect carefully, engage with contractors before projects begin and ensure the applicable electrical code is fully understood and followed. So even with busier contractors and inspectors, Hofkin has seen no departure from the norm in terms of violations uncovered. Still, he worries that could change for the industry if the supply and demand equation continues to shift with the economy, making good inspector candidates harder to find.
“We don’t have a shortage of bodies now in the inspection field, but looking ahead qualified bodies is a question mark,” he says.
Addressing a shortage
That would still equate to a shortage in almost anyone’s book, as electrical inspection work demands highly competent and honest practitioners, perhaps now more than ever given the growing complexity of electrical infrastructure, and the entry of alternative energy technologies into the mix. Jurisdictions facing shortages now, in a time of peak demand, may still be left to wonder if the combination of an experienced but aging inspector corps and an emptying pipeline of suitable replacements could spell trouble down the road.
Wise wonders if his county and other Florida jurisdictions will be increasingly squeezed by the state’s policy that electrical inspector candidates pass multiple exams and have five years hands-on experience — four if a four-year degree in a related field has been obtained. While reflective of the position’s importance, he worries the practical effect of that high bar is to further seal off inspection work as a career path for many.
“By the time someone has put in five years, they’re in a position to make a lot more money than an entry-level inspector,” he says.
Part of the solution might be seeding inspection staffs with career-minded young people. Building officials across Florida, Wise says, are looking to tie into a state-inspired construction trades internship program created in 2016. High school graduates interested in the field would work in building inspection departments, gaining knowledge and experience that would partially meet requirements needed to sit for an inspector exam. An added benefit is that interns at some point could be provisionally licensed, he says, allowing them to perform inspections, which could help during busy periods.
Early-stage career professionals and job shifters within the building trades will be important components of any effort to fill what’s likely to be a growing number of job openings. A 2014 look at “The Future of Code Officials” by the International Code Council and National Institute of Building Sciences suggests the typical code official is between 55 and 64 and has worked in the building industry for 26 to 35 years. It found that 30% planned to leave the profession within five years, and 85% within 15 years.
From that perspective, today’s inspection backlogs in especially active markets may be a harbinger of things to come. Jurisdictions pressured today will find a way through, IAEI’s Clements says, but going forward they could face tough choices in deciding how to attract, qualify, vet, and compensate inspectors. The growing attrition problem will demand solutions, he says, and part of the answer may include moving to more multi-hat inspectors, hiring outside contractors, and incubating internship programs. Another element of the solution: crafting an electrical inspector standard, something the National Fire Protection Association is now pursuing, Clements says.
“There’s some inconsistency around the country on training and qualifications and a standard could be used by jurisdictions to help determine the proper ratio of inspectors to maintain,” he says.
Zind is a freelance writer based in Lees Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].
Sidebar: Third-Party Inspectors Edge into the Spotlight
Private inspection services, which have existed on the periphery of traditionally government-run building inspection regimes, are drawing more scrutiny as the opposing forces of accountability and economics clash.
Third-party inspectors, hired either by contractors or governments, have flourished in some parts of the country, while encountering fierce resistance in others. Of late, the debate over their role has only intensified. Amidst a stronger push for more privatization of government services, tax rollbacks, and now overworked and understaffed city/county/state inspectors during a building boom, contracted inspection services may be well positioned to fill an expanding void.
“Elected officials are under the gun to provide services for the least amount of money possible, so if they can farm things out they’ll do it,” says Donny Cook, chief electrical inspector for Shelby County, Ala. However, he worries about the fallout from more private inspection services entering the market. “You don’t want regulators competing against each other on cost,” he says.
In Austin, Texas — where city inspectors are having a hard time keeping up with surging demand — there’s been talk of changing policy to permit their use; inspectors must now be city employees. Rich Anderson, division manager for inspections, says any such arrangement would have to be structured to maintain the integrity of the process.
“We’d probably not allow a contractor to pay for that inspection service because of the potential for conflict of interest,” he says.
But direct private inspection service-contractor setups have a long history in some areas, such as the Middle Atlantic states. Michal Hofkin, senior electrical inspector with Middle Department Inspection Agency (MDIA), Conshohocken, Pa., says the setup works well, partly because local governments closely watch the process.
“The city of Philadelphia has an inspection auditing program to make sure agencies are doing the proper inspections and good work,” he says, adding there’s some evidence audits have lately uncovered more problems.
But elsewhere questions are being raised. In Oregon, the state’s Building Codes Division has been seeking to clamp down on small municipalities’ longtime use of third-party building and electrical inspectors, citing a recent state court opinion that such arrangements run counter to the state’s constitution, interpreted to require inspectors to be government employees. However, the BCD directive that would end many third-party arrangements received strong pushback from municipalities and builders who said it could raise costs and slow inspection timelines. In late May, the state backed off plans to implement the new rule starting July 1.
