Knowing the rules is not the same as knowing the work

A new building official can read the Ontario Building Code cover to cover and still walk into their first complicated file unsure where to look first.

That's not a failure of training. It's the nature of the work. The Code lays out the rules. It doesn't tell you what a small movement in a floor joist means when you're standing on it. It doesn't tell you how to phrase a tough order so the homeowner actually understands what's being asked. It doesn't tell you when to push back on a designer who's confidently wrong, or how to do that in a way that keeps the working relationship intact.

The gap between knowing the rules and knowing the work is real, and it's wider than most people outside the profession realize. Building official mentorship is how it gets bridged.

The work that doesn't appear in a job description

Ask any seasoned building official how they actually learned the job, and you'll hear the same kinds of stories. A senior inspector who let them tag along on inspections for a year. A Chief Building Official who took the time to walk through tricky files line by line. The colleague who picked up the phone late on a Friday afternoon when a permit decision needed a second opinion before the weekend.

None of this shows up in a job posting. Almost none of it makes it into a training manual. But it's a real part of what keeps building safety in Ontario consistent. From one community to the next and from one generation of officials to the next.

Consistency matters more in this profession than it gets credit for. A homeowner in one township should be able to expect the same standard of service as a developer in a neighbouring city. It doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen because everyone read the same document. It happens because experienced officials have spent time teaching newer ones how the document gets applied.

Why mentorship matters more in Ontario right now

The math on the building official workforce in Ontario is not in our favour. A significant share of senior building officials are within a decade of retirement, and the pipeline of newer professionals isn't catching up at the same pace. Municipal building department staffing across the province is feeling the squeeze.

The work itself is also piling up. The provincial mandate to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031 means a volume of permit and inspection work most building departments haven't handled in a generation, often with the same staff they had before the targets were set. Senior officials are stretched. Time for mentorship is harder to find than it used to be, and the stakes for getting it right are higher than they've been in years.

That's a quiet problem with a loud long-term consequence. If we don't actively pass down the practical knowledge sitting inside the heads of our most experienced officials, that knowledge leaves with them. 

This is one of the reasons Building Safety Month is worth taking seriously. It's a chance to recognize the people doing this work, and it's also a chance to recognize the people teaching others to do it.

When there's no senior staff member down the hall

Mentorship gets even harder in small Ontario municipalities.

A lot of municipalities in this province operate building departments with one or two staff. Sometimes one of those staff is brand new to the role. Sometimes both of them are. There's no one to call when a complicated file lands on the desk. The newer official is doing their best, often in genuine professional isolation, on work that affects the safety of every home and business going up in their community.

This is one of the gaps RSM Building Consultants has spent years working to fill.

We act as an ongoing mentorship resource for understaffed and newer building officials across Ontario. When a tricky question comes in on a permit, they have someone experienced to call. When a file feels out of their depth, they have a senior building official to walk through it with them. When they want a second set of eyes on an order they're about to issue, or on an interpretation they're not yet sure of, that resource is there.

The point of the service is not to take the work off the local official's plate. Their authority, their judgment, and their relationship with their community matter, and those should stay with them. The point is to make sure they're not having to make every call alone. The same kind of mentorship a senior official would offer a junior one across a shared department, RSM offers across a phone line or a video call to municipalities that don't have that bench depth in-house.

For the communities themselves, the value is straightforward. Their building official has support. Their files get the experienced second look that builds confidence in the outcome. And the public, who will never see any of this happen, ends up with the same standard of Ontario Building Code support as a resident of a much larger municipality with a full department.

It's mentorship, scaled to fit the way Ontario actually looks. A lot of small communities. A lot of building safety work that still has to get done well.

A thank-you that's overdue

If you're an experienced building official who has taken time over the years to bring someone newer along, you've done more for public safety than you've probably been told. The buildings that are safer because of the officials you mentored, who in turn mentored others, are part of your legacy whether you think about it that way or not.

At RSM Building Consultants, we try to do the same on our end. Inside our team, alongside the partners we work with across Ontario, and on the phone with the newer official in a small community who needed someone to call. We're glad to be part of an industry where so many people quietly take this seriously.