Don’t Dumb Down Inspectors

If the importance of construction inspectors wasn’t apparent enough to residents of Los Angeles after the MTA subway tunnel problems, the Belmont Learning Complex fiasco or the horrible seismic events in Turkey, then the earthquake in Taiwan has once again put emphasis on the importance of that precious but endangered group of people.

Whether it’s a specialist inspecting soil conditions, the grading of a site or the overall structural quality of a building, nothing should supplant the expert inspection talent to ensure that the city’s buildings are safe.

Leadership in Los Angeles recognized this in 1889. They saw the calamities that fraudulent construction practices and construction errors caused elsewhere, so they created a staff of highly trained construction inspectors and organized them into work groups that specialized in each aspect of building construction. This program of specialty inspection work groups continues today and it is one reason that our Department of Building and Safety is acclaimed internationally. However, a program is underway to “dumb down” the city’s inspection services. Under the generic term “multi-hat,” or “combined inspector program,” Superintendent of Building Andrew Adelman proposes to eliminate specialty inspectors. Adelman intends to have an inspection program where one person, a generalist, inspects all aspects of commercial and multi-unit residential construction.

This is alarming considering that every previous superintendent of building acknowledged the importance of specialist inspectors. As a result, they determined that the city should use specialty inspectors, without exception, for all construction inspections of buildings intended for occupancy by the public--stores, offices, restaurants, hotels and apartments. It is obvious that this approach to inspection is a preferred regulatory practice, inasmuch as higher occupancy buildings used by the public should meet higher inspection standards.

The concept of using generalist inspectors is the most recent example of a trend in a number of areas from medicine to manufacturing that attempts to save money by sacrificing quality and endangering lives. Builders and developers pay permit fees that, according to California law, the city must use toward the cost of the inspection service. So why take risks and eliminate a fee-based service that provides the most basic of protections?

We should not give in to a bottom line. We cannot allow the most important class of inspectors to be eliminated. Remember that it was inspectors, specially trained and qualified, who spotted the deep soil problems at Belmont and the undersized tunnel walls during the MTA’s subway construction project. It was also the lack of specially trained and qualified inspectors that contributed to the disasters in Turkey and Taiwan.