Inspecting the inspectors

CHARLOTTE – The Mecklenburg County Code Enforcement agency does a good job reviewing building plans, issuing building permits and inspecting construction projects.

But it also doesn’t.

Two sets of customer feedback – from contractors, developers, architects, engineers and others who deal with Code Enforcement – painted differing pictures when they were presented to the county’s Building Development Commission (BDC) on Tuesday as part of County Manager Dena Diorio‘s comprehensive review of the agency.

Her seven-pronged review was prompted by letters from several groups, including Charlotte’s Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition and the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, complaining that Code Enforcement practices often unnecessarily slow down projects and drive up their costs.

Those complaints were echoed in some of the 60 completed responses received during a two-week online customer service survey conducted June 9-23 at the request of a select committee of BDC members and representatives from building-industry groups.

The responses are still being processed, said Ebenezer Gujjarlapudi, director of the county’s Land Use and Environmental Services Agency, which overseas Code Enforcement. But an initial review shows that:

• Nineteen respondents said it was difficult to get information from Code Enforcement and that staffers were not helpful;
• Thirteen said the attitude of many plan reviewers and building inspectors was unprofessional;
• Eight said the staff often was not available or difficult to reach.

But a second set of feedback responses – 1,714 Code Enforcement customers who filled out eight-question surveys after completing projects over the past year – found that only 4.3 percent of the answers rated the agency’s work as “unacceptable-needed improvement.”

The eight-question surveys were instituted before Diorio announced her review in February.

A little more than 45 percent of the responses fell into the “acceptable-met expectations” ranking, and just over 50 percent were in the “exceeded expectations-excellent-exceptional” category.

The final results of the two surveys are expected to be completed when the BDC meets again, on Aug. 19.

The inconclusiveness of the two surveys touched off a round of lively give-and-take among members of the BDC, which is composed of building industry professionals and acts as the advisory board to Code Enforcement.

BDC member Bernice Cutler, who represents the Charlotte Apartment Association on the commission, said that customers who work with Code Enforcement are reluctant to complain about the agency because they fear their gripes will come back to haunt them on future projects.

That, she said, limits the number of responses, the specificity of the complaints and the overall accuracy of both surveys. Only 22 of the 60 completed responses to the June online survey contained specific information about construction projects, including the names of plan reviewers and building inspectors.

“They say, ‘We can’t afford retribution,'” Cutler said. “It might not be conscious” on the part of a building inspector, “but it is human nature for him to feel like you are going behind his back.

“The next time (an inspector) is on my jobsite, there might be 10 minutes left in his day, and he’s not going to try to fit in my inspection.”

Gujjarlapudi responded, “No tinge of that is going to be tolerated.”

BDC member Ed Horne, who represents the Charlotte Area Association of Electrical Contractors, defended the agency’s reviewers and inspectors as “professionals” who are above “petty personal things.”

But commission member John Taylor, who represents the Mecklenburg General Contractors Association, said that some contractors on big projects get “antsy” when final inspection time on a project rolls around because they have come to expect to fail the first time around, delaying occupancy and ratcheting up costs by tens of thousands of dollars.

Taylor said his peers have told him it is common for inspectors who go to a project a second time, after a first failed final inspection, to find problems he or she did not identify the first time around, creating a perception that the inspector is playing games and deliberately holding up the project.

Travis Haston, vice chairman of the BDC, responded that contractors are often to blame when that happens because they sometimes know their projects are not up to code at the time of the final inspection but wait for the inspector to find the faults.

Haston, who represents the National Association of the Remodeling Industry of Greater Charlotte, said the inspector’s job is to pass or fail a project on his first inspection, not to create a comprehensive list of things remaining to be done that will get the project passed the second time.

“It’s not fair for contractors to expect inspectors to make their punch lists for them,” Haston said.

“They make the (inspectors) run the punch list, and that’s not (the inspectors’) jobs. When an inspector finds four or five defects, he’s not going to do the whole thing” because the project has already failed. “He says, ‘I’m stopping here boys.'”

Toward the end of the meeting, BDC member Rob Belisle, representing the Southern Piedmont Chapter of the Professional Engineers of N.C., said the commission and the Code Enforcement agency should do a better job informing the industry, the public, Diorio and the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners about the importance of what the agency does.

“Until there’s an earthquake or a hurricane, nobody cares about the value of inspections,” Belisle said. “This is about safety. The industry is concerned about their rate of return. How do we show that?”