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Dive Brief:
- Chicago Department of Buildings hasn’t fixed issues that kept projects moving through the approval process without proper inspectionsthe city’s Office of Inspector General said in a June 5 report.
- The OIG’s findings follow a August 2022 audit who first identified the problem. In a review of permits issued between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2019, the OIG highlighted 42 buildings that did not have inspections but were fully constructed. The agency found that, for these buildings, DOB completed only 198, or 49.7 percent, of the 398 required inspections. Of these, only 11 structures, or 3%, obtained a passing grade.
- In November 2023, the watchdog agency gave the DOB recommendations on how to fix its process, a call the department has not responded to, according to the follow-up report.
Diving knowledge:
In Chicago, the responsibility for scheduling required inspections rests with contractors, according to the 2022 report. Other municipalities, like New York Cityfollow the same mode.
The 42 fully constructed buildings the OIG reviewed included 35 single-family homes, some of which had already been bought and sold, according to the 2022 audit. None of the buildings required certificates of occupancy, according to the audit, as the watchdog noted that the DOB was making sure buildings that required these ratings received the necessary inspections.
Although the DOB consistently performed the requested inspections, it did not use the available one data to identify situations where licensees did not request it, according to the report.
The second report’s suggestions for remedial measures include:
- Develop procedures to ensure the completion of necessary inspections before a building is fully constructed.
- Train staff to maintain data in an effective and consistent manner.
- Proactively monitor issued permits and improve data quality to support comprehensive and accurate permit tracking and program performance evaluation.
- Consider alternative procedures to ensure permit holders request inspections, such as requiring a wider variety of buildings to receive certificates of occupancy.
These four recommendations have not been implemented by the DOB, according to the report. He also noted that the construction agency’s response to the inquiry has focused on building a system for the future, rather than fixing the current one.
“By DOB’s own account, it has been working ‘for decades’ on implementing the new system,” the OIG office wrote in the follow-up report. “Therefore, the OIG continues to urge the DOB to develop procedures to identify required inspections and ensure that they are completed, whether the procedures are compatible with the current system or the expected system.”
The DOB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
