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Building Plan Review and Inspections Consultant Agreements <br />November 5, 2019 <br />Page 2 <br />fourteen (14) firms that submitted a statement of qualifications, all are qualified to provide <br />Building Safety services. The complete list of qualified consultants is included as Exhibit 1. <br />Development activity in the City has been trending upward since 2011 and the high permit activity <br />has been sustained over the eight years. Currently there are several mid to large scale projects <br />that have been issued permits or are in the process of obtaining permits. In addition, many large <br />scale projects that are in the entitlement phase are anticipated to be submitted to the Building <br />Safety Division for review in the near future. <br />For many years, the Building Safety Division met or exceeded a turnaround time of three weeks <br />or less for over 90 percent of plan check submissions and 24-hour inspection turnaround time. <br />This level of service compared favorably with surrounding municipalities and represented the <br />generally accepted performance goal for plan review and inspections in the County. The Building <br />Safety Division had attained this plan review level of service with nine in-house plan check staff, <br />a contract plan checker at the public counter, streamlined internal processes, and outsourcing <br />plan checking services during especially high volume months. <br />Currently due to attrition, the Building Safety Division currently has three plan review staff of the <br />seven funded plan review positions filled and eight of the ten funded combination building <br />inspection positions filled. The reduction in available staffing has created delays in the plan <br />review turnaround and inspection turnaround times. Also the high level of permit and inspections <br />activity has been a negative impact on inspection turnaround time as the inspection staffing has <br />not kept pace with permit activity for 24-hour response time has increased to as much as two <br />weeks. The effects of which are: <br />• Overall delayed construction timelines which is detrimental to all construction projects, <br />especially medium to large commercial, industrial, or mixed -use projects as delays drive <br />up construction costs and reduce revenue to the general fund. <br />• Constant service requests by developers for expedited plan review, expedited inspections <br />or dedicated inspectors for their projects which is currently non-existent other than through <br />in-house staff overtime which is unsustainable. <br />• Unpermitted construction due to contractors not willing to wait for plan review and <br />inspections that will have life -safety implications and will necessitate costly future <br />remediation. <br />Sustained growth from the building industry combined with current turnaround times for regular <br />(non -expedited) plan check exceeding seven weeks has resulted in an increasing number of <br />projects requesting expedited plan check. Building activity has continued to increase in the past <br />fiscal year with many projects choosing to expedite the plan review process. Due to the number <br />and size of the accelerated projects since 2014, including large projects such as 1901 East First <br />Street, 301 Jeanette Lane, and The Heritage at 1951 East Dyer, contract funds have been nearly <br />expended. It is anticipated that building activity will remain at a high level and the approval of <br />these consultant on -call list would allow for the expedited customer services through plan check <br />services that the building community is requesting. <br />25B-2 <br />