# Third party inspections : a public inspectors view point



## cda (Dec 21, 2018)

Construction in Fort Worth is booming. Fueled by a swelling population, developers within the 15th-largest city in the United States are playing catch-up. Posh developments like Waterside, The Shops at Clearfork, and Crockett Row at West 7th boast dozens of new retail stores and restaurants. Walsh Ranch aims to add 50,000 residents to Fort Worth’s residential portfolio in the coming years. 

But before each business or home can be opened or sold to a tenant, a city-approved inspection is required to verify that the project meets safety guidelines set by Fort Worth’s Planning and Development Department. In recent years, Fort Worth has increasingly relied upon third-party contractors for that heavy lifting. The change effectively means local developers are freer to shop around for inspection companies. Private companies are quick to paint city inspectors as slow and inefficient, despite city data shared with the _Weekly_ that shows 94.6 percent of city inspectors performed their jobs “on time” over the past 12 months.

On its website, one local inspection agency boasts that it “has a contract with the City of Fort Worth that allows us to perform the same work done by the city in half the time and with far greater customer service.”

One city inspector has grave concerns about the trend. He spoke with us on condition of anonymity. We gave him the pseudonym Joel for this story.

“Fort Worth has allowed this major erosion to take place,” Joel said. “There is a deception going on. If the third-party inspector is too demanding on the builder, the builder will threaten to pull the contract [and work with another third-party inspector]. It happens.”

And therein lies the biggest danger, Joel said. It’s not that these private inspection businesses aren’t qualified to perform the important work they do. The companies are required to have the same training and accreditation as city employees, and city policy requires final sign-offs on finished homes and businesses by a city staffer. But a private development company in Fort Worth has the leverage to shop around for the most accommodating third-party business on the market, he said. Many Fort Worthians, Joel added, don’t know that their homes are being inspected by private companies. Most Fort Worthians also probably don’t know that most major projects, including the $500 million Dickies Arena, an immense point of pride for Fort Worth civic leaders, are inspected by third-party companies.

I reached out to Bureau Veritas, an international third-party inspection company with an office in Fort Worth. Before I was able to ask for a response to Joel’s concerns, I was cut off.

“We don’t comment on anything,” a Bureau Veritas manager told me. “Don’t call any of our people.”

Other calls to local agencies were not returned. Allison Gray, assistant planning and development manager, told me in an email that the city began its current third-party program in 1999 as a response to “demands by the development community for timely review of construction projects and the city’s inability to meet that demand due to heavy workload and difficulty in hiring qualified staff.”

Fort Worth currently contracts with six private companies for inspections:  Bureau Veritas, Code Pro, Code Solutions, MetroCode, North Texas Inspection Services, and Winston Services. The city currently employs 34 inspectors, including three supervisors and three parkway inspectors, Gray said. Between 2015 and 2018, she added, the city maintained its current number of inspectors. City communications director Kevin Neal said the 2019 budget does not include any new inspector positions.

Joel said he knows former city inspectors who left to work for a third-party business to earn higher pay. Hourly wages for city inspectors stand at $20.87, according to Gray, while an inspector working for a private company can expect $29.74 per hour, according to the online salary resource Payscale. I reached out to city officials in Austin, Dallas, and Houston to gauge the prevalence of third-party inspectors on city projects. The only city to reply in time, Austin, uses third-party inspectors in a similar fashion to Fort Worth. 

According to city fee guidelines, safety permit fees can run into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, meaning the city is losing part of a large revenue source by allowing outside contractors into the safety business. Joel said that by allowing third-party inspectors to advertise directly to construction projects, the city is violating its own conflict of interest policy, which states that private businesses “shall not be associated in any way with the Third Party Organization.”

Gray said using third-party inspectors is not in violation of the city’s conflict of interest policy because the interactions between outside contractors and developers do not constitute a “substantial interest.” She went on to cite the lengthy legal definition of substantial interest, which, among several other clauses, restricts “Third Party Companies [from having] any voting shares” in the private businesses they contract for.

Toward the end of my interview with Joel, he described how he enjoys working for the city and exploring Fort Worth through onsite inspections. But if he receives a call from an outside agency to do the same work for higher pay, he knows what he’d say.

“If the offer was there, I would say more than half” of his colleagues would go, he said. “Myself included.” 


https://www.fwweekly.com/2018/12/19/outsourced/


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## cda (Dec 21, 2018)

I think if I was a city I would not renew thier contract


We pride ourselves on our integrity and honesty to develop a “Team Spirit” with all of our developers, architects, engineers and general contractors. *Metrocode has a contract with the City of Fort Worth that allows us to perform the same work done by the city in half the time with far greater customer service.*

*The best part is that we do all the work for the similar price you would pay the city.*

That means that you get premium permitting, plan review and inspections for the same cost!



http://metrocode.com/commercial/


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## cda (Dec 21, 2018)

http://www.winstonservices.com/services.html


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## jar546 (Dec 21, 2018)

That is a different "third party" than I am use to.  I know that in PA a third party agency has to contract with the municipality to either perform all or some of the services needed.  The building permit fees are split between the municipality and the third party agency.  In many instances, if not most, the third party agency is the building code official and perform all of the same administrative tasks and have the same responsibilities acting as a representative of the state building code.

This happens because many municipalities do not have enough permit activity to warrant the staff needed that are qualified and certified to perform all inspections.  In order to enforce the state building code they have to contract with third party agencies that work for multiple municipalities.  In general it is a good idea and should work well but there are problems.

Problem #1 is that the enforcement is reflective of the governing body that votes on the third party contract.  If they get too many complaints when people fail inspections, that wears down the municipal leaders and the third party's contract is then not renewed.  I experienced this a lot.  My mantra to everyone was to be "fair and equal", with no special favors to anyone.  This of course in a corrupt political system does not go over well.  Who knew that "fair and equal" would be a problem?  Just doing your job good was a problem.

Problem #2 you don't have the same bite as a municipal inspector because they are well protected under state and municipal law.  Third party agencies are easy targets because they are mandated to carry professional liability insurance, way more expensive than general liability.  I also know this first hand.

Problem #3 there are plenty of incompetent third party inspectors and municipal inspectors but if you are a third party agency and know that you have to take care of certain people because of #1 above, you will be as lax as you can be and turn your head the other way when asked in order to keep your contract.

It really takes a professionally run, fair municipality that is ethical to allow a third party agency to enforce the codes fairly and professionally.

With that being said, I did have a few situation where a municipality allowed several third parties to do plan review and inspections and had to bid jobs to get them.  In one instance we were hired to do a plan review in Carbon County Pennsylvania for a conversion of an apartment building into a bar-restaurant.  The prints were not stamped, included about 4 pages and were probably one of the most pathetic set of non-compliant drawings I ever saw.  Needless to say the plan review did not go over well with the owner so they sent them to another third party that stamped them up.  I was paid for my plan review and I was not the BCO of that town so no skin off my back.  That business continues to operate to this day.


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## cda (Dec 21, 2018)

Nothing on third party??


http://fortworthtexas.gov/planninganddevelopment/inspections/


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## ICE (Dec 21, 2018)

Most of Southern California operates like Carbon County Pennsylvania.  Writing a lot of corrections makes work for supervisors.....people complain.....inspectors learn which lever to press for a treat.


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