Growth forces 'drive-by' inspections, critics claim

Critics say homes and businesses are being poorly built in the Las Vegas Valley because overworked building inspectors are forced to perform "drive-by" inspections.

City and county officials counter that they do as thorough a job as possible but depend on the builders to follow the building codes.

Dennis Whitaker, owner of Quality Construction Advisor Inc. in Las Vegas, said his photograph album of housing blunders proves building code violations escape detection.

Whitaker, who inspects homes and commercial buildings for prospective buyers, pointed to a photo of a high-priced home in the Spanish Trails subdivision. The plywood panels used in the walls were placed against each other instead of spaced out so that the wood could expand when humid, a defect he said could lead to exterior cracking.

"This house passed its framing inspection," Whitaker said, while pointing to a photo of another home. "But the fireplace is crooked. You can see the fireplace bow in and out."

Local government officials such as director Robert Weber of the county Department of Building insist the inspections are as thorough as possible. Weber said many construction defects are caused by builders who make changes to a structure after an inspection and without the inspector's knowledge.

"We're doing oversight, but we cannot warranty that every detail of every project meets the code," Weber said. "You're dealing in a fraction of a percent of the time that we spend on a job site versus those who work on the job. There's a heavy reliance on the foremen who need to pre-inspect to make sure things meet code."

Each house inspected by the county goes through 14 different inspections, including site preparation, foundation, framing, exterior and interior, electrical, plumbing, mechanical and final.

John Tomczak, owner of Nevada Home Inspection Service, said the building departments are forced into "drive-by" inspections because they are understaffed.

Inspectors employed by Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson currently average three to 18 hours of overtime each week.

"With all the residential building going on you can't tell me every building is inspected," Tomczak said. "You're killing these guys. I don't think there is enough money allocated for them."

But Weber objected to implications that his department performs drive-by inspections.

"We're addressing the major areas in terms of code compliance on the days we make the inspections," he said. "But we don't have control over what builders do before and after. These changes may be covered up on our next visit."

Scott Canepa, a construction defect attorney who has represented thousands of homeowners in the valley, said Weber told him in a deposition that the county inspects only a tiny percentage of each structure.

"The fact that a municipality will conduct an inspection is no guarantee it will meet the code," Canepa said. "The inspectors are only doing spot inspections. The responsibility lies with the contractor. It's the responsibility of the contractor to meet the code.

"My axe isn't with the municipalities, who are doing the best they can with the budgets they have and the manpower they are given. Adding inspectors will help but it will not solve the problem unless they hire enough people to monitor construction from beginning to end. Given the amount of construction we have I think that's a fiscal impossibility."

There are no national standards that dictate the amount of time inspectors should be spending at work sites. But Paul Wilkins, director of the Las Vegas Building & Safety Department, said he has heard that inspectors should perform no more than 18 inspections a day.

By comparison the averages are 63 inspections a day per inspector in Henderson, 32 a day in Las Vegas, and about 28 a day in Clark County and North Las Vegas. However, those numbers can include multiple inspections at a single location, such as mechanical and electrical reviews done on the same day.

"I would like to get ours down to 22 to 24 inspections a day," said Wilkins, who has 53 inspectors. "But if I had more technology such as computers I wouldn't necessarily need more people. Every building official would say they would like more people, but I don't think that's realistic."

Michael Bouse, director of the Henderson Building & Safety Department, conceded he is concerned about his 39 inspectors suffering from burnout.

Bouse projects that the valley's fastest-growing city will perform more than 365,000 inspections this year. But he said his department is studying the possible use of portable computers that would enable inspectors to spend more time in the field.

Staying busy

"Right now the building activity is keeping them very busy," Bouse said. "I would say our people are working nine to 18 hours of overtime a week. But I don't think code violations are being overlooked as a result of our workload."

Similar sentiment was expressed by Phil Coggins, acting building director in North Las Vegas, which employs 17 inspectors.

"We're working long hours, but no one compromises anything," Coggins said. "If I find they are letting things go, I will terminate them."

Local building departments have found that the competition for qualified inspectors is fierce because the private sector often pays more money. Weber said his department even competes against the municipalities, noting that he has lost inspectors to the city of Henderson, which offers higher pay and a four-day work week.

For the county one of the biggest problems is retaining younger inspectors. Because they haven't accumulated much in terms of pension and other benefits they often bolt for greener pastures, Weber said. The county has 74 inspectors but also has 13 vacancies, including six new positions and seven other openings created by retirements and resignations.

Weber said he believes his department, which performed 442,000 inspections for the fiscal year that ended June 30, will greatly benefit when those positions are filled. A projected slowdown in the number of new hotel rooms also could help, though there has been an increase in the construction of high-priced condominiums.

"The challenge is getting qualified people when you need them," Weber said. "One issue is that construction workers in general don't stay long in one place. We're competing with engineering and architectural firms for field-type people and contractors for foremen who oversee work."

Weber said inspectors would benefit if they didn't make so many wasted trips to work sites. Builders are not supposed to call for inspections until they believe they are ready. But Weber said that close to 20 percent of the time the inspector discovers either that the work wasn't ready for inspection or that there were code violations that would have earned a failing grade.

The county's inspectors are funded by fees builders pay for approval of building plans and permits. The builder of a 1,600-square-foot home pays about $950 into the building department fund, while a 3,000-square-foot home generates about $1,350.

General fund revenues

The cities operate differently in that their building departments are financed by general fund revenues. Some builders don't like that because they believe some of their fees go to functions other than the building department. But Henderson budget manager Richard Derrick said the revenues generated by builders in that city and the building department expenditures are about the same.

Despite its heavy workload the county building department received a high code enforcement rating in 1997 by a national organization that has analyzed nearly 4,000 building departments in the United States for the insurance industry. Insurance Services Office Inc. of New York City gave the county a Class 3 rating, placing it in the upper 12 percent of the departments surveyed. Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson were all given Class 4 ratings, placing them in the next 26 percent bracket.

The last time the county building department underwent an internal performance audit was in 1994, when 58 percent of builders surveyed felt the department could provide better service and training. Nearly one-fourth also believed that codes were not enforced equally among all builders. The department is scheduled for its next performance audit later this year.

But Steve Holloway, executive director of Associated General Contractors, said Weber deserves "a lot of plaudits" for improving code enforcement. County building inspectors also were praised by Irene Porter, executive director of the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association.

"They have a willingness to achieve the best results," Porter said. "They're very involved in the national codes and in statewide building issues."

But there is local disagreement over the definition of a building code violation. Building inspectors and builders support the concept of "substantial compliance," meaning the intent of the code has been met.

"The building code is a performance standard, but it is not exact," Porter said. "You don't build a building measuring every nail. A majority of code violations are caught during building inspections, but they're never going to catch them all, if there are any."

An attempt to adopt the "substantial compliance" interpretation failed as part of a construction defect bill that died in the Nevada Legislature earlier this year. The opponents were construction defect attorneys such as Nancy Quon of Las Vegas and consumer advocates who wanted the code strictly enforced.

"The building code sets out very clearly what has to happen in the home," Quon said. "If it doesn't happen, then it is a violation of the code. And the code is only a minimum standard requirement."

Porter said she wouldn't be surprised if disputes over interpretation of the code wind up before the Nevada Supreme Court. She conceded that most builders are unwilling to go to court to fight construction defect lawsuits. Builders' insurers would rather settle out of court to avoid high litigation costs even if their clients don't believe they are at fault, she said.

Consumers who have complaints about a home or commercial structure can also try to get help from the State Contractors Board. There were 1,574 workmanship-related complaints covering Clark County and Pahrump in Nye County that were filed with the board from July 1, 1998, through the end of last month.

Of those, 752 were resolved in favor of the consumer, 596 were deemed invalid complaints and 226 are pending. Porter said most of those complaints were based on repair or remodeling work and not construction defects caused by the original builder.

Cosmetic issues

"A majority of complaints against builders are not code issues but cosmetic issues," Porter said. "They are cracks and chipped tile."

But lawyers and some inspectors-for-hire say there are plenty of code violations throughout the valley. Quon said a large number of her cases involve alleged electrical code violations. She cited the example of a client whose 2-year-old northwest valley home caught fire because of faulty wiring. The irony is that the homeowner happened to be a firefighter.

Quon said inspectors sometimes will look at an electrical box in one tract home and then take the word of the builder that adjacent homes also meet the code.

"In almost all our lawsuits we find there are building code violations," Quon said. "We call them drive-by inspections because there are just not enough inspectors to do the inspections. It's not easy to keep up with the amount of building we have."

Canepa, who won a $100,000 judgment from the city of Las Vegas because of construction defects in two condominium complexes, said frequent code violations can be found within condo walls.

"We see a lot of missing fire protection features like fire draft stops that are designed to eliminate or slow the spread of fire from one condominium unit to another," he said. "We also see problems with the separation walls between condos. They have to be built so that it takes one or two hours to burn through. But we have seen improper drywall from the thickness to the type of drywall, missing drywall and missing nails."

Missing or incorrectly applied nails are problems Tomczak said he has also seen on numerous occasions. He said he had a local client who complained about "creeking and popping" whenever she walked across the second story of her new home. Tomczak lifted the carpet and discovered that the subfloor beams were not nailed down properly. He subsequently found the same problem in five other two-story homes on the same block.

Tomczak said he also found 37 homes in a 2-year-old subdivision where the wiring was too small for the power it was expected to carry.

"Some of these guys string the wire so tight you could play it as a guitar," he said. "A guy can get in his attic and (accidentally) sever the wire."

MGM Grand fire

The most notorious local accident involving a building was the 1980 fire at the former MGM Grand Hotel that claimed 87 lives and injured 700 other guests. That fire forced Clark County to adopt new safety specifications for high-rise hotels.

More recently the county was ordered to pay $162,000 in 1997 to replace more than 100 faulty metal chimneys at the Royal Palms Apartments at 5711 W. Tropicana Ave. that passed inspection but were later deemed fire traps.

Just about everyone agrees that builders are under enormous financial pressure to construct homes and other buildings as quickly as possible. They have customers to satisfy and construction loans to repay, let alone the money they also are obligated to pay their own staff and subcontractors.

But those who suggest that code violations are rampant throughout the valley place much of the blame on builders who accept more work than they can handle or hire unqualified subcontractors in a market where the demand for qualified labor is far greater than the supply.

"We're getting the dregs of subcontractors because there is so much work," Canepa said.

Turning the table

Porter turned the table by questioning the qualifications of home inspection businesses, suggesting that such practitioners be regulated by the contractors board instead of the state's real estate division. She also criticized the growing number of attorneys in town who specialize in construction defects. Porter said the litigation drives up the cost of the builders' liability insurance, which is passed on to consumers in the form of higher-priced homes.

"You will see such occurrences in a high-growth area because there are a lot of projects," Porter said. "Attorneys will come in and sue because it is very profitable, especially since most cases don't go to trial. It will be like California where the lawyers decimated the real estate market. There will be no one left to sue so then they'll go to Arizona.

"The downside is that the consumer has to disclose at the time of sale of the house that they were involved in a construction defect lawsuit."

Weber also argued that the attorneys are attempting to force city and county building departments into the "guarantee" business.

"But we can't do that," Weber said. "We would have to hire an inspector for every person working on the project. We don't think that's practical because there would be an extremely high cost. What we do is an audit and spot verification process.

"If we don't have buildings falling down or major fires spreading from building to building, then we're doing a good job."

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