By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer

The adoption earlier this year of the updated version of the International Building Code is having repercussions in the commercial contracting industry due to the inclusion of a chapter that requires special inspections.

Chapter 17, Structural Tests and Special Inspections, was hotly debated at a recent meeting of the Charleston Contractors Association and the subsequent Building Industry Legislative Reception, which included a question-and-answer session with Gov. Mark Sanford.

“Prior to 2000, there were three major code bodies,” said Charles Baker, an attorney with Buist Moore Smythe and McGee. “There was the International Conference of Building Officials, the Building Officials and Code Administrators, and the Southern Building Codes Congress International. The ICBO was mainly in the western part of the country, BOCA was primarily the northeast and around here, we more or less followed SBCCI.”

South Carolina, Baker said, was a hodgepodge of code enforcement, with each county able to adopt its own standards.

“There was a movement to make everything more uniform in the building industry, not only here, but around the country and internationally, so the International Codes Conference was formed to come up with the International Building Code. It came up with its first code in 2000,” he said.

When South Carolina adopted the 2000 version, it did not adopt Chapter 17, which meant the special inspections were excluded from enforcement. In 2003, the ICC came out with revisions, and in January of this year, the state adopted the revised code and included the chapter on special inspections, Baker said.

“This is the first time Chapter 17 has been applicable to commercial buildings in South Carolina,” he said, “and that’s the real reason behind the concern at these meetings. The whole idea is to make things uniform, and it’s all geared toward safety. The problem is in the application of the chapter’s requirement of special inspections on commercial jobs.”

Chapter 17 states that “the owner or registered design professional … shall employ one or more special inspectors to provide inspections during construction on the types of work listed in 1704.”

Special inspections are required for major commercial contracts and are excluded for minor commercial work and Group R-3 residential work.

Ray Maher, vice president of Brantley Construction Co., foresees difficulties with implementing the special inspection requirements.

“All of a sudden we have a code that says the architect is responsible for defining which inspections are needed on a job,” Maher said. “The problem is what we do if he doesn’t define what’s necessary. If something is left out, do we shift liability from the owner to the architect?”

The requirements could incur additional costs, he said.

“If the architect decides he wants a professional engineer to sign off on the work, we’ve created a circumstance where we could easily spend three percent of the building costs just because the architect doesn’t want to be liable. Plus, just to administer something like this is going to take time, and it builds in another level of inspection requirements,” Maher said.

Also at issue is the definition of “approved inspector.”

“Every county can have its own standards,” said Maher, “and that’s subjective. The inspector has to satisfy the building official, which can mean discrepancies.”

Said Baker:

“It’s a matter of whether the inspector is competent to the satisfaction of the building official, and that’s left up to the building official. That’s where you get into the county-to-county differences.”

The difference between counties is an area of concern on the state level as well. Gary Wiggins, administrator for the South Carolina Building Codes Council, said Chapter 17 is subject to the administration of each local jurisdiction.

“That’s the only area the council cannot affect,” Wiggins said. “That’s why we don’t have a standardized procedure in place for this. Early on, we tried to put together a manual to deal with special inspections, but the various jurisdictions had heartburn with it, and consequently it never got off the ground.”

Wiggins points out that the special inspections required in Chapter 17 affect about 20% of the municipalities in South Carolina.

“Most jurisdictions don’t have buildings of the magnitude that would get into these issues. The major buildings, malls, factories and highrises, aren’t built in the rural areas. With the amount of commercial construction in Charleston, we can understand how that area is concerned.”

Wiggins has heard from several contractors across the state and expects that a presentation may be made at the council’s next meeting on Feb. 22.

“At the moment, we don’t have a formal request, but we expect they’ll be asking council to assist in putting some language together to allow for standardization of inspectors,” Wiggins said. “We would have to have the support of the industry and building officials in order to assist with this. That’s where we’re getting into a testy area because it will mean the local jurisdictions would have to give up a bit of responsibility.”

Depending on the nature of the request, Wiggins said the matter could go before the state Legislature for changes in the law.

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