Aslam Rana is a little perplexed his last week on the job. Since he announced his retirement from the City of Dothan after 19 years and 27 days, he has received many well wishes and expressions of appreciation.

“I tell them I just did my job,” Rana says with a shrug. “They shouldn’t thank me. It was their money, their taxpayer dollars that paid me. I was working for them.”

It is this attitude of humility and service that Rana, the inspections services manager for the city, has attempted to instill in the 11 staffers working with him, and culminated with the reorganization of a more user-friendly building inspections and permits division a few years ago. Rana, who recently turned 65, was promoted to his current position on Dec. 7, 1997. The very day he moved into his new office, he slipped a strip of paper under the glass table topper.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Rana reads. “That’s Socrates. I tried to live by that. I know I’m not perfect. Nobody is. You live and learn from your mistakes. I have always told everybody in the office, if you see me do something wrong, correct me. And they did, without any fear. If I am wrong, let me know.”

Also, from day one, Rana explained his views on public service which he expected fellow workers to adopt – well before the city began placing an emphasis on customer service. “I said that our salary comes from the people. They are our customers, and as taxpayers, they are our bosses. They come first.”

Rana’s is a familiar face in the building and development community. He has been to thousands of job sites over the years and worked with dozens of builders, engineers and architects. He has checked drywall and foundations, wiring and property lines. It has been a busy career, one that began with various private architectural firms in the area, and moved on to government, where Rana’s tenure saw highs and lows in building.

“In 2006, we were working very hard,” he says. “We went from permitting 250 to 300 houses a year to 617 residential permits in 2006. We have gone from about 500 to 1,300 inspections per month.”

During the building process, a home is typically inspected 10 times. Mark Everett of Everett Construction said it is vital to successful building that those inspections be done in a timely matter.

“You reach a point, you can’t go any further until it is inspected,” Everett said. “Aslam made us all realize, he was just a phone call away. Aslam was always fair to work with, and he never forgot that his responsibility was to the consumers of the City of Dothan. He was steadfast in his adherence to the codes to be sure homes were built to or exceeded the requirements. He was a pleasure to work with and will be missed sorely.”

A key part of Rana’s job has been to manage the construction – the building of Dothan, being sure the codes are enforced. A strict adherence to code, Rana believes, has made for better construction in the city. In 2000 he implemented the certificate of occupancy program whereby no home could be sold, no commercial development inhabited, without that certificate that said everything checked out.

“What it did was put a closer on the construction,” he said. “And it protected the builder and the occupant.”

Rana joined the city as a draftsman for Dothan Utilities in 1989. He transferred to the buildings and inspections office in 1993, as a building inspector. After the retirement of Wylie Yelverton, who was the head of that division, Rana applied for and was hired as Yelverton’s replacement. It was the first time the head of the building and inspections department had a degree in the field, and it was a position Rana applied for, but didn’t get, back in 1983.

“I knew in the early 80s, the building official’s position was not run the way it should be. When I was hired, the city updated the requirements and required a degree.”

He moved the city from a system of inspections that sometimes meant just signing off on the work because of the builder’s name, to a detailed checklist and a standard system for everybody. Those “sticky moments,” as Rana calls them, were resolved with the utmost tact. “I would tell them if they built it and God forbid, there was a fire tomorrow, the insurance company was going to look at it. If there was one little thing not right, they may not pay. I told them, ‘It’s for your protection.’”

Rana is a Muslim, born and educated in Pakistan. He came to the United States by way of New York in 1972. His first job in the Big Apple paid $1.90 per hour, with Rana placed at the front desk of a large architectural firm. He was told he could work his way up. Rana stayed there one month and 19 days before hooking up with a Pakistani friend who urged him to relocate to Jacksonville, Fla. He did and his wages jumped to $4.50 an hour. Now bringing home $130 a week, Rana was able to bring his wife to America in 1973. “Then in 1973 the oil embargo dried up the construction industry,” he said. “Everybody was laid off except the two of us with babies. Our first child was born in 1974. My hours had been reduced. I started looking for a job.”

Rana started calling everybody he knew. “A friend in Birmingham said there was a job in Dothan, Alabama, but neither of us knew where Dothan was.” Rana took the job, working with Joe Donofro. While he loved the city as a great place to raise a family, which would eventually grow to three children, Rana believed he would need to supplement his income. He started buying run-down homes, renovating them and renting them out. At one time, he had 39 homes and three apartment complexes. That number has been reduced to seven homes and the three apartments, which have about 30 units each.

Rana left Donofro and went to an Ozark firm before moving to Wainwright Engineering for significantly more money. Then, he says, he “lost his mind” and started managing a restaurant owned by a friend, who was Dothan’s second Muslim resident.

“I found out it was a stupid mistake,” he says. Rana then took a job with Philip Spann, eventually leaving to join former superintendent Jimmy Kilgore in Dothan Utilities.

His next to last day on the job Thursday, Rana said he has no plans to leave Dothan. He wants to travel some and do freelance design work.

“I will be involved. It may not be 7 to 4 or 8 to 5, but I will be working,” he said. “The city is definitely a good place to work. I tell the inspectors the same thing. That, and be thankful you have a job.”