Contractors and Developers
Services
CASp evaluations and consultation
Full review services including Fire-Life Safety, CASp level accessibility, Structural, Plumbing, Mechanical and Electrical, Green Building and Energy
Work closely with your building and site development teams to help with code related issues
Pre-Permit Submittal Plan Review. This helps to insure when submitting for a building permit, the plans get through the plan check phase with minimal corrections and resubmittals
Accessibility design and field inspections during design and construction
Work with your prospective tenants to ensure that access upgrades as required by the current version of the California Building Code, Chapter 11B do not go unaccounted for and are worked into the budget
Drafting and Design services as needed
Work closely as your personal Code Expert and liaison to the Building, Planning and Fire Departments to work out Code related issues.
A Word to Contractors and Developers …
Contractors face tremendous frustration and expense when they have to demolish and rebuild parts of a project because — even though it was built per plan — the plans were not correct, and were approved by the Authority Having Jurisdiction during plan check anyway. With Steve's experience as an ICC Certified Plans Examiner since 2007 and a Certified Access Specialist, CASp #393, since 2012, his code knowledge can greatly minimize, if not entirely avoid, that outcome. Let's face it — it is easier to fix on the plans than in the field.
A building permit is not an ADA defense.
Your building department enforces the California Building Code. The ADA is federal civil rights law, and it is enforced through litigation and Department of Justice action — not through plan check. A plan checker's approval stamp does not make a noncompliant facility compliant, and 28 CFR Part 36 contains no exception for work that was permitted, inspected and signed off.
That is why an error that survives plan check is still yours to fix later, at field prices.
Noncompliant new construction gets no safe harbor and no cost limit.
This is the part that costs developers real money, and it separates new work from old buildings entirely.
An existing facility that was never altered has two forms of relief. Barrier removal is required only where it is readily achievable, and the element-by-element safe harbor protects elements built to the 1991 Standards.
Newly constructed or altered facilities get neither. Under 28 CFR 36.406(a)(5), facilities or elements constructed or altered before March 15, 2012 that do not comply with the 1991 Standards must, on or after March 15, 2012, be made accessible in accordance with the 2010 Standards. There is no readily achievable limit on that, and no safe harbor.
Build it wrong and it does not age into compliance. It stays wrong.
Which standard applies is set by the permit date, not the build date.
Under 28 CFR 36.406(a):
Permit application completed before September 15, 2010 — the 1991 ADA Standards apply.
Permit application completed on or after September 15, 2010 and before March 15, 2012 — either the 1991 Standards or the 2010 Standards may be used.
Permit application completed on or after March 15, 2012 — the 2010 ADA Standards apply.
Where no permit was required, the trigger is the start of physical construction or alterations. Ceremonial groundbreaking, and demolition before site preparation, do not count as a start.
And in California, the path of travel obligation may not stop at 20 percent.
On projects where the adjusted construction cost exceeds the valuation threshold, CBC Section 11B-202.4 Exception 8 requires full path of travel compliance. Relief requires an unreasonable hardship finding by the enforcing agency, recorded in its files — and even then the code states that in no case shall the cost of compliance be less than 20 percent of the adjusted construction cost.
The federal 20 percent is a ceiling. Above the California valuation threshold, it becomes a floor. A developer budgeting to the federal number on a large California project is budgeting short.
The cheapest place to catch any of this is on the drawings, before the permit is issued. That is the work: pre-submittal plan review, accessibility design, and field inspection during construction — so what gets built passes the first time.