Legislative Study Commission on State Construction Inspections, report to the 2007 General Assembly

              Legislative Study Committee on State Construction Inspections
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North Carolina's recent change to the International Building Code; and disagreement
between designers and the Department of Insurance over code interpretation. The
Department of Insurance, through guideline checklists and their website, is trying to
communicate the Department's expectations to designers and owning agencies. The
purpose of these initiatives is to reduce the amount conflict over interpretation of the
building code. The stakeholders raised the concern that the Department of Insurance does
not currently offer general code instruction for owning agency personnel and designers. The
community colleges offer building code instruction for code officials, but owning agencies
stated that code official classes delve deeper into the subject matter than is appropriate for
their personnel. Owning agencies are interested in high level instruction on the State
Building Code and also stated that designers might benefit from the continuing education
opportunity.
Recommendation # 19 – Owning agencies identify the training needs of their capital
program administrators and connect them with training opportunities in the Department
of Administration.
Recommendation # 20 – Department of Insurance develop general training
opportunities for owning agency personnel and designers on the State Building Code.
Resource Needs in Review/ Inspection Agencies
The Study Commission heard from owning agencies, designers, builders, and the
review/ inspection agencies about various resource needs of the review/ inspection agencies.
Through the course of its work, the Study Commission found:
 When the General Assembly authorizes capital projects, very little attention is paid to the
impact of those capital projects on the general government agencies responsible for
supporting and overseeing those projects.
 In discussing the impact of the 2000 Higher Education Bonds, the impact of the Bonds
on the review/ inspection agencies was covered several times. The review/ inspection
agencies raised the concern that they're workload and workflow is impacted by large
capital authorizations by the Legislature, but these authorizations do not address
anticipated impacts to the review agencies. The stakeholders agreed that impacts to the
review agencies should be included in the State's Capital Improvement Program and in
large capital authorizations by the General Assembly. Several ideas were discussed, such
as indirect cost charges on capital projects, or administrative costs added to projects.
The workgroup recognized the challenge of implementing such charges. Capital funds
are non- recurring and any such charges would not provide the recurring funds necessary
to establish permanent positions. Time- limited positions would be difficult to fill.
 Department of Insurance has code reviewers looking at both private and public facilities.
The Department is considering establishing procedures for shifting reviewers between
the private and public review operations to address workload surges. Private and public