Protect Your Municipal Building Department from Liabilites

It’s no surprise that taking proactive steps to prepare for life’s uncertainties can help reduce risks and lessen the burden. We prepare for the unexpected all the time in our personal lives: we bring an umbrella on a cloudy day; we invest in health, life, home or auto insurance plans; we schedule regular car maintenance; and we purchase warranty plans for our electronics. For most of us, these protections are put in place without much thought or debate. They are simply a necessary part of life to safeguard us from the financial or physical challenges that can arise when the unexpected occurs.

Now, in consideration of our municipal building departments, the question inevitably becomes: What can we do to protect ourselves from liabilities? So, let’s look at possible situations where your building department may experience unnecessary difficulties or increased liabilities and discuss how to mitigate negative outcomes for your municipal building department.

Every municipality works to provide the best service with minimal staff to avoid unnecessary costs. As we know, a chief building official (CBO) is mandated to be appointed in each municipality. However, in small municipalities, the CBO is often the only building department employee, taking on not only CBO responsibilities but plans reviews and inspections too. So, what happens to the municipality when your CBO wants to take a vacation, or worse, falls ill suddenly?

If your municipality isn’t prepared, the loss of your CBO, even temporarily, can be disastrous. A municipality is liable and legally responsible to maintain permit issuance and inspection timelines mandated by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH), and the loss of a CBO can leave a municipality to scramble as they put together a last-minute plan. That’s why some municipalities have written agreements with a neighbouring municipality to continue providing these services if their CBO needs to take a sudden leave of absence. In other situations, municipalities have resorted to hiring a retired CBO to temporarily fill the position.

This exact scenario happened to a municipal building department when their CBO was suddenly hospitalized. The municipality only had one other building official staff member: an inspector with minimal qualifications and only a few months’ experience. To deal with the sudden loss of their CBO, the new inspector reached out to RSM. Since an agreement was already in place between RSM and the municipality, RSM and the new inspector worked together to ensure the building department continued their operations without delay.

Even for smooth-running municipalities, big or small, the provincial mandate to build 1.5 million homes by 2031 is shocking. This provincial goal demands that municipalities ask themselves a hard question: Are we ready for the large townhouse subdivision that may be coming to our municipality?

Although your municipal building department might be a well-oiled machine, a large influx of projects like this may cause your staff to be fatigued and overworked. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety indicates that fatigue can reduce decision-making ability, cognitive processing, communication skills, alertness, attention, vigilance and reaction time while simultaneously increasing risk-taking behaviours and impairing our judgement. Effects such as these can cause serious difficulties for your municipality and staff well into the future. So, what options do municipalities have to avoid this issue?

One option is for the municipality to hire more staff, but this can present other problems if the increased workload is only temporary. When one municipality experienced a large work influx due to a 700-unit townhouse subdivision being planned in their municipality, they worked together with RSM to receive models from the builders prior to applications being submitted. RSM reviewed these plans as certified models with various options, working through deficiencies of the most common scenarios. Once they were ready to apply, RSM met with the builders to teach them how to use Cloudpermit to copy applications in the system, which helped to reduce errors and wasted time. The applications were then assigned to the examiner, who had reviewed the certified model to further expedite review times since they were familiar with the certified model. Utilizing five to six staff members with various areas of expertise ensured a streamlined process and resulted in all reviews being accepted and processed within Ministry-mandated timelines. Moreover, the builders were thrilled with the expediency of the process. 

Others may have the qualifications but not the real-life experience needed to make educated decisions as they review drawings or inspect buildings. Right now, you may have a veteran mentoring your new staff, but what happens if they decide to retire or leave your municipality? Who will take on that mentorship role? 

RSM has building officials specializing in every type of building and can offer support and mentorship for your new building official needs. This is done through peer review, mentorship meetings, a thorough inspector mentorship program or RSM’s extensive training options, including the new Inspector’s Technique Suite. RSM works with new building officials to help them gain the experience and confidence they need to be ready to inspect on their own. 

As Ontario’s population continues to grow rapidly, municipalities and cities are noticing that they are receiving applications for taller, larger and more complex buildings. Since these have never been proposed in their municipalities before, their building officials do not have the experience required to review such plans. 

Some municipalities will rely on the experience of the professionals who designed the building, and the building department’s review may not be as detailed as those of larger municipalities with plumbing, HVAC and structural experts on staff. Other municipalities may rely on local engineering and architecture firms as consultants to review these plans, but the scope of responsibilities of a designer and a building official are different, and the expertise is not always transferrable.

Alternatively, RSM’s experienced team of building officials can review these building applications to ensure Code compliance. In this scenario, you won’t need to have someone on staff to review that one application that falls outside your staff’s experience, especially if your team hasn’t had the opportunity to dive into the new Code changes that are coming in 2025. RSM has been working since the announcement of the 2024 Code changes to ensure that, when your municipal building department needs support, RSM can seamlessly provide that support through up-to-date training, mentorship or plans review support services.

As you can see, the liabilities facing our municipal building departments are numerous. Whether we are talking about a sudden leave of absence, overwork, fatigue, staff shortages or inexperience, there are many ways in which liabilities can pile up on your municipal building department. Moreover, the ways in which liabilities can pile up does expand beyond the limited scope of this article. Yet, as we have seen throughout, it is a matter of pre-planning and preparing for those liabilities that can save your municipal building department time and energy.

Beyond what your building department can do to mitigate these liabilities, RSM and their services also provide supports for your municipality in reducing risks by providing knowledge, experience and solutions to navigate any situation. Although no one can predict the future, we can certainly prepare contingency plans so that we are ready when the unknown comes knocking at our municipal door.