If we think of code compliance as being a safety net for building occupants and rescue workers, we can easily understand why plan reviews and inspections are so important. Focusing on code compliance as a kind of safety net can easily convince us that building and fire prevention departments must strive not only to provide high-quality plan reviews and inspections but also to commit to continuous improvement through tried and true quality management techniques.

Building safety begins with the registered design professional (RDP) being well versed in construction code requirements; however, trust in RDPs alone is not enough. RDPs, even those using the latest sophisticated technology, ultimately produce plans created in the mind of a human being. And, no matter how carefully crafted, sometimes these plans contain mistakes. Some of those mistakes, if unnoticed, may end up having a disastrous impact on the soundness of the building, the safety of the occupants and/or the accessibility and security of rescue workers.

Building departments as well as fire prevention and life safety departments are authorized and directed to enforce the provisions of the adopted construction codes of the jurisdictions they serve. In the classic ICC publication Building Department Administration, Robert O'Bannon explains, "If it were necessary to rate the various features of a building department as to respective degrees of importance, it is quite likely that plan checking would rank first. Although the building code may not specify the degree of completeness for which a plan must be checked, there is an implication that the checking should be more than cursory. If this were not true there would be no point to plan checking. Looking to see that someone has signed the plans is not a check." It is clear that the act of careful plan checking tightens the gaps in the safety nets that code-educated RDPs first weave together. It is a critical undertaking by the department.

So, if RDPs string together the first safety net, and plan review technicians increase the density of the safety net, how do the communities that building and fire prevention department serve ensure a level of consistency in safety? IAS, with years of building department accreditation expertise, can say with confidence that one great way to ensure consistency is by adding quality management mechanisms to your department's toolkit. Quality management helps a department to ensure that its quality of plan reviews assures the level of safety expected by a jurisdiction's leadership and its citizens. And, in this case, quality is assured by taking the time to monitor completed plan reviews.

In monitoring plan reviews, a department will create for its citizens a much stronger and secure safety net. To begin, you will need to create some goals for your department and to define those goals in multiple parts by breaking out targets for error rate, sample size and monitoring frequency.

To define your goals for maximum error rate tolerance, you will need to decide what kind of errors are undesirable but not catastrophic, and also what kind of errors cannot be permitted under any circumstances. A lot of jurisdictions will sort these into two categories such as "major" vs. "minor" or "life-safety" vs. "non-life-safety" errors. It is very important to develop an in-depth list of potential errors that would constitute either major or minor errors so that the plan reviewers, as well as supervisors monitoring, are absolutely clear as to the department's expectations.

Next, it is crucial to define the sample size for plans to be monitored. The sample size should be set so that it is large enough to be fairly representative but not so large that it is burdensome or unrealistic for supervisors to maintain.

Also, a monitoring frequency must be set. Let's say that the goal for major errors is zero and that the goal for minor errors is set for four or less. Is that goal for each review or is it the overall goal for every 100 plan reviews monitored. It is important to define these details to eliminate confusion. Additionally, would this be the goal for the total number of plan reviews re-evaluated within a two-week period, in a two-month period, or for the whole year? For example, a goal may be set in the following language: "Our department's goal for plan reviews is to allow zero major errors in every plan review and to allow no more than three minor errors in 99 percent of plans reviewed each quarter. We will verify that our department is meeting its goals by sampling five percent or a minimum of one, whichever is greater, of the plans reviewed by each employee every quarter."

Another critical component of a high-quality analysis of plan reviews is to establish an objective evaluation process. It is imperative to eliminate subjectivity wherever possible. When evaluating plan reviews, departments take their stated goals and based on the prescribed monitoring frequency create a checklist or form which provides a detailed method for monitoring completed plan reviews. This way, each employee’s work is evaluated the same way and each evaluator is consistent in their reviews, no matter which supervisor may be conducting the evaluation. In addition, the department must create a uniform way of tracking the information that arises out of a series of plan review audits. It is suggested that this data be tracked not only by individual employees but also by error type. This will allow the evaluators to spot trends: Is one individual employee making similar mistakes or are multiple employees missing a particular item across the board? The point of auditing completed plan reviews is never to create an opportunity for disciplinary action; on the contrary, the point is to find out where your staff needs additional training and to recognize an opening to invest in and improve your staff by providing them with specific and necessary training/tutoring.

When conducting evaluations to spot training opportunities, it is important to use sample expansion as a tool to better understand employee trends. If your prescribed sample size is three reviews per one particular employee in the current quarter, and you find that this individual missed a large number of minor errors in two out of three of his or her original plan reviews, you may want to expand the sample size to six or nine plan reviews to see if it was a fluke that 66 percent of this employee’s work contained an unacceptable number of errors; conversely, it is essential to expand the sample size in order to determine if what was found is truly representative of the employee’s overall performance. This helps a department to, once again, remain objective and to use this evaluation tool to define opportunities for education and to better enhance the quality of its current staff.

The Building Department and Fire Prevention and Life Safety Department Accreditation programs from IAS require the quality assurance of plan review and other key department activities as a precursor to qualification for accreditation.

To learn more about improving your department’s safety net through quality management, or to find out more about IAS accreditation, please contact Program Manager, Preet Bassi, at 1-866-427-4422, extension 3263, or send an e-mail to info@iasonline.org.