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N. Charleston examines an English speaking mandate
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
A change that may be coming to North Charleston is an ordinance requiring contractors working on residential projects to have an English-speaking foreman on the worksite at all times and that the foreman be experienced and knowledgeable about the actual type of work he’s overseeing.
Darbis L. Briggman, building director for the city of North Charleston and president of the Building Officials Association of South Carolina, said he hopes to have an ordinance mandating the job site foreman requirement before the city council in September.
“Oftentimes what our inspectors have found when they’ve visited the site of new residential development is that the subcontractors have hired a number of immigrants to actually do the work and then left those workers unsupervised at one home site while they themselves have moved on to others,” Briggman said.
“There are a couple of critical problems with this practice. First, these workers, be they Hispanics or from the West Indies or wherever, often have little or no training in the work they’re actually performing.”
In one case, Briggman said, a city inspector found that a man working for a framer, simply by virtue of improperly adjusting the air pressure on his nail gun, was assembling a house entirely with broken nails.
“There’s no question that home would have been entirely unstable if we hadn’t identified it,” he said.
Other common mistakes found in residential construction in North Charleston in recent years include incorrect interior measurements. In one example, a worker didn’t take into account the thickness of the drywall used, resulting in hallways being only 35 inches wide that are supposed to be 36 inches in width by code.
“Lennar, KB Homes, the others – I think they all have to really start scrutinizing their contractors,” Briggman said.
Language is also proving to be a significant problem. In instances where only an immigrant work force was present on a residential construction worksite, inspectors have had difficulty explaining why they were visiting a site and in gathering the information they need to ensure the work is done right.
“It’s my hope that the city council will adopt an ordinance empowering us to issue a stop-work order if we find no foreman present on a residential construction site,” Briggman said.
“We can’t be there 24 hours a day. Someone has to be in place to make sure these jobs are being done right.”
Because of the lack of supervision, residential construction is a far bigger problem area than commercial construction, where it is far more common for a contractor to constantly have a supervisor on site and where general contractors routinely do what are called “Chapter 17 inspections” on specific structural elements of a project and on specific project areas, such as welding, Briggman said.
Edye R. Graves, deputy building official for the city of Charleston, hasn’t noticed any similar disparity between residential and commercial construction in the city of Charleston, but did say she often sees business and home owners misunderstanding their role in the construction
process.
“I think the No. 1 thing I see as a challenge is building owners not knowing what a permit requires and that they need to be hiring a contractor who will then secure the permit for them,” she said.
“You can’t do that in the city of Charleston. If there’s one thing we preach here, it’s you can’t do it yourself,” she said.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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