Organized Labor

Isam Hasenin Notes Progress in Effort to Make Department of Building Inspection More Efficient and Transparent

Organized Labor interviewed San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection (DBI) Director Isam Hasenin recently to ask him about progress he is making on plans to improve the operations of the DBI after six months on the job.

Hasenin was hired last March to head the DBI, which issues permits for construction projects in the City, does inspections, and deals with building code enforcement. He holds an M.S. degree in Civil Engineering with an emphasis in structural design and is a licensed professional civil engineer. He is recognized as one of California’s experts on building codes and serves as the Vice Chair of the California Building Standards Commission, the body responsible for adopting and implementing building codes statewide. He also serves on the International Code Council (ICC)’s Education Committee, responsible for training and education for its 50,000-member organization.

Mr. Hasenin created and managed the Division of Building Safety & Construction Permits, and centralized all reviews and inspections to streamline and enhance customer services. He previously headed San Diego’s Department of Building Inspection. Upon the hiring of Hasenin, Mayor Newsom said, “Mr. Hasenin has developed a reputation as a national leader in his field. His technical experience and management capabilities will be a tremendous asset to the Department. He brings a tremendous level of professionalism to the Department as we continue to implement the reforms and process improvements begun under Acting Director Amy Lee.”

Hasenin proposed an “Action Plan” in a briefing with the Building Inspection Commission (BIC) in May after his initial assessment of the DBI’s permit review and approval processes, outlining steps to take to streamline the process. He told the Commission that he had spent his first 50 days “aggressively examining the nuts and bolts” of the department, finding deficiencies and weaknesses—including poor management and customer service, lack of decision-making, and insufficient spending.

Customers were often subjected to an inconsistent fee structure and a complex bureaucratic process that sometimes included conflicting requirements from different divisions. A 2001 audit by Controller’s Office found a culture of preferential treatment and called for reforms. A grand jury report in 2003 also cited the department’s favoritism.

In a June 15 piece in the San Francisco Examiner, Hasenin wrote, “It’s a new day at DBI, and over the next 12 months we’ll deliver to the citizens of San Francisco a more effective, efficient, transparent and responsive building inspection department.

As we implement the BPR [Business Process Re-engineering] process, we’ll be able to provide appropriate prioritization of what needs to be done to move DBI to dramatically improved levels of operations.”

He proposed a series of improvements, including establishing a remodeled Permit Center/Customer Service Center at 1640 Mission St. to facilitate multiple-agency review services in an improved “One-Stop Shop” environment, a dramatically larger and faster “Over-the-Counter” plan review process, a new Customer Services’ initiative to improve wait-time and customer-flow management, as well as a Customers’ “Bill of Rights” to set clear, realistic and predictable expectations.

In addition, Hasenin recommended establishing a new “Service by Appointment” program, where customers set a precise date and time for DBI professional staff assistance and eliminate unpredictable waits for appropriate technical reviews; a new “Guaranteed Second Opinion” program to resolve difficult code interpretation decisions; a completely revamped “Intake Process” to improve the quality of accepted applications and reduce the time required to review and approve permit applications; a single, comprehensive permit-application form designed to eliminate overlapping and/or duplicating information; and consolidation of all plan reviews and plan checking functions, with staff commitments to specific turnaround times.

He noted that “in each month of the year DBI performs 11,000 inspections, issues 5,100 permits, performs 3,200 plan checks, responds to more than 10,000 calls for information, appointments and records, responds to 600 inspection division complaints, completes 300 housing/code compliance cases, and completes 2,200 housing inspections.” He credited his staff for their competence and technical skills to be able to deal with the public services’ demands on the department. “DBI has a highly professional, competent and technically savvy staff, and many of the recommendations I’m proposing today will give the staff better tools, and a significantly improved organization that will enable us to deliver excellent services fairly and impartially to all our customers,” Hasenin told the BIC in May. “We’re going to be more customer-responsive, less bureaucratic, and measurably more efficient, transparent and effective.”

Hasenin told Organized Labor that progress was being made on the changes he proposed. “We’ve been implementing a lot of those changes and recommendations to fix the deficiencies we identified. Along with that we’ve started a Business Process Re-engineering, which is a detailed look at the process of how to increase efficiency, elimination of duplication, elimination of unnecessary steps. We’ve set up committees that are looking at each component of the [permitting] process. We’ve invited members of the industry, community members, stakeholders and management and line staff who do this day in and day out to come up with good ideas for change. It will take us probably a couple of years to complete the process.”

“We’ve done a few things, for example what we call an expanded over-the-counter service where we allow more projects to come in as an over-the-counter service rather than be submitted where you have to wait days, weeks, months to have plans checked,” Mr. Hasenin said. “What this allows is for you as customer to walk in, go from one station to another, you have a plan checkers check your plans, and if there are comments you can take the plans back home or to your office, make the changes, come back and sign up again on the list and get signed off and get your permit. So doing that will take out a lot of the smaller jobs that used to take in through the submittal process and which really clog up the system and which delays things for everybody.”

In his position in San Diego, Mr. Hasenin had found the Building Department to be under-staffed and hired more engineers and inspectors. He said that the DBI was still assessing current staff levels and not hiring new staff. “We’re looking at levels of service with our industry partners to see what they want as far as service level and if that means a higher level of service that requires more staff then we’ll do that.”

When asked about problems with the department from before he took over he said, “There’s always work to be done and you have to stay on top of things and keep assessing your operation. With a lack of direction the department was falling behind in the business of permitting and reviews. What I also found was an eager, highly efficient, and dedicated staff that were ready, willing, and able to assist in taking us to the next level. So far I’m very impressed that we are making progress, and obviously without the staff we wouldn’t be able to achieve any of the changes and improvements we’ve made so far.”

He said that unlike San Diego, San Francisco, as an almost a fully built-out and dense city, poses different challenges for code enforcement and for building in Seismic Zone Four. “Here in San Francisco, like any other seismically active region, the building codes regulate how you do construction. There’s a higher level of requirements. We have to design for a higher level of seismic action. We put together a committee of renowned engineers who look at the project to see that it is designed rigorously to high standards.”

When asked if there was a limit on the number of high-rise buildings in a seismically active area, Hasenin said, “Not from a structural engineering or building codes standpoint. Obviously there may be issues on the planning side. As far as engineering, as long as you take into account the conditions at the site, like soil conditions, and design appropriately and use sound engineering concepts there is no limit.”

As for the future, Hasenin said that building codes were continually being revised based on new research and technology.

“What we do in the whole business of the code development process is there’s a national process that’s already in place and has been in place for over 100 years that’s proven very successful. Even when we have disasters, like earthquakes, we don’t suffer the same kind of losses as other countries with similar disasters. We’re always looking at the latest technology, the latest in research, the latest in learning lessons from other disasters so we can learn from those and implement changes in codes which change every three years.There’s always something to improve.

As changes are made and policies evolve, it is important to keep DBI staff up to date and well trained, Hasenin pointed out. In San Diego Hasenin implemented and formalized trainings to ensure that his staff was better equipped to do their job. He said that in San Francisco’s DBI, “We’ve implemented huge changes to make training a way of life here rather than just hit and miss. We have training sessions where we bring in experts to train staff on new codes and major changes. “In our business it is so highly technical and complex that you can take classes but if you don’t try to apply those then you are missing out,” he said. “We make that a part of our culture here.” He said that the department had set up weekly meetings for code interpretation “where the staff can bring their experiences from the things they run across on a daily basis. We look at it collectively and make changes if needed.”

Mr. Hasenin was asked if he thought the DBI had a role in preservation or development of affordable housing in the city, where many working class people, including construction workers, are unable to afford to live. “I do absolutely believe we have a role to play in the big picture and I take that very seriously,” he said.

Just by virtue of making the permitting process more expedited, efficient, and predictable—and the key word is predictable—then you will get less cost for people to remodel their homes or businesses and that will lead to lower costs to maintain buildings. Even in new construction there are ways to interpret the codes that are more helpful. When they do comparisons of construction costs, anything we can do to cut the time for code interpretation, permitting, inspection—that will reduce construction costs because time is money. [Developers of new projects] know they can get their project on the market in half the time they used to or less than they used to, that helps with the affordability.”

“We are proceeding in terms of change,” said Hasenin. “Having been here six months and looking back, I’d say that with the assistance of the staff, the mayor, the Board of Supervisors and the community at large I’ve been impressed with what we have accomplished so far.”