Navigating Challenges with Your Local Building Inspector: Expert Guidance for Compliance and Success

When facing challenges with your local building inspector, it can be essential to have the right professional guidance to ensure compliance and navigate complex building codes effectively.

Why Hire a Licensed Architect or Professional Engineer?

If you are having difficulty working with your local building inspector, consider hiring a licensed architect or a professional engineer who specializes in building codes and regulations. These experts can provide invaluable support in ensuring that your necessary repairs and renovations are compliant with local building codes and regulations. Here’s how they can help:

Knowledge of Codes

These professionals are well-versed in local building codes, zoning laws, and safety regulations. They can help ensure that your repairs are compliant and up to legal standards.

Experience with Inspections

These specialists often have extensive experience dealing with building inspectors and can navigate the expectations and requirements more effectively. By understanding the inspector’s expectations, they can help smooth the process and ensure you are fully prepared.

Advocacy

An architect or an engineer can act as an intermediary, communicating with the inspector on your behalf and advocating for your project. This advocacy is crucial in ensuring that your needs are met and that your project is treated fairly by the inspector.

Project Management

These experts can help manage your repair project, ensuring that all work is performed according to code and that any necessary permits are obtained. They have the experience to ensure that everything is compliant and documented properly.

Documentation

They can assist in preparing the required documentation for permits and inspections, making the process smoother and more efficient.

Problem-Solving

If issues arise during the inspection process, these professionals can help develop solutions that satisfy both you and the building inspector. This is particularly important as it can help avoid delays and additional costs.

Case Study: A Decade-Long Battle with Building Inspectors

I had a case against my residence with the inspection department in my former city for ten years. The case was initiated by a nuisance neighbor. I helped one inspector decide to retire, and I outlived the first environmental court judge involved. My property was owner-occupied residential, and this made the situation more complex.

If your building is a commercial property or rental residential, it is more complicated because it is a place of public accommodation. If it is a historic building, the requirements might be different. Smaller designated historic buildings are exempt from some ADA requirements for example.

Your city should have its zoning, building, and health codes online. If you want to know more about your infractions, a reasonable first step would be to ask the inspector to cite the specific ordinances being violated. Then you can read them and ask whatever questions you might have. Ask the inspector what types of specialized work is required—structural repairs will require a structural engineer and a contractor, masonry, framing, roofing, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, interior finish, painting—and which work has to be done by licensed, insured contractors. The inspector probably will not recommend specific contractors.

Understanding the Requirements

Once you understand what needs to be done and why, discuss with the inspector what the city’s priorities are usually life safety, occupant health, public health, and safety, cosmetic, and what constraints you might have—finances, pace of DIY work, unforeseen circumstances not discovered as you bought the building.

When Extensive Repairs Are Required

If the work required is extensive and involves a lot of trades, then you might need to get a general contractor. If your city has similar buildings that have had work done lately, then you might call the owners and ask them who handled the jobs. Find three or four who are interested, show them the building and the building inspector’s report, and ask for a proposal showing phases of work related to the city's priorities and estimated costs and dates of completion. Understand that even a thorough inspection might not reveal all conditions, and consider the need for a contingency fund.

Funding the Repairs

If you need to finance the repairs, apply for an appropriate construction/rehab loan. The bank that financed the purchase would be a likely place to start. You’ll probably need to apply for a loan to cover all of the work as a lender will not want to lend on a building that is still subject to city action when the work is finished.

Keep the inspector apprised of your efforts. He needs to know that you are working on the issue and if the costs are a problem. Presenting the contractors’ proposals would give the inspector a professional opinion of the time and costs involved that would be hard to ignore.

A Decade-Long Solution

I was able to drag out my case because:

I showed the inspectors that my house was in better condition than it appeared to be, so much of the work demanded was actually cosmetic. I showed the inspectors why rushing the work would be damaging to my house. I could credibly show that some of the work I wanted to do, well above and beyond requirements, but concurrent, was expensive and specialized. I made adequate incremental progress on the work required.

The drawback to this approach was that they added work to the complaint as the years went by. However, the work needed to be done, and it was better to proceed with thoroughness and sobriety.

The Role of Building Inspectors

It is easy to see building inspectors as pushy and unpleasant, but some of them are not. Once you understand that the inspector has a job to do, and the inspector understands that you intend to bring your property up to code, the process becomes easier. I’d still rather deal with a building inspector than a Homeowners’ Association.