City Ups Ante on Land Disturbance Permits

One of the hardest permits to obtain in Chattanooga related to building projects—the land disturbance permit—just got harder to secure. The City of Chattanooga recently added several new requirements that could delay the permitting process and will definitely add cost to your building project.

What is a Land Disturbance Permit, and who needs one?

A land disturbance permit gives an owner or a contractor the right to disturb the land on a piece of property. The basic premise is that the city uses this permit to assure that the appropriate water quality control devices will be put in place before and during construction. You have probably seen a ground-up construction project where a grading contractor comes in with heavy equipment and strips and removes most of the vegetation and whatever else may be on a site. Before this can start, a land disturbance permit must be issued.

Projects of a lesser scope also require land disturbance permits. You want to add a couple of parking spaces to your parking lot? You’ll need a land disturbance permit for that. You want to build a small addition to your office building? That too will require a land disturbance permit. In fact, most projects that involve building additions and/or site improvements will require this permit.

What Was Required in the Past?

Until recently, it had been a while since the requirements for a land disturbance permit had changed. Obvious requirements were civil and/or building plans showing the proposed work. These plans would include information on erosion control protection measures as well as storm water (rain) runoff data. This information, provided by your engineer, would show your previous storm water runoff quantity and compare it to the projected runoff quantities after the improvements are in place. Any additional runoff would most likely have to be detained on site with a detention pond or some other approved measure. If you were adding to your parking lot, you would most likely be required to add protective measures to keep oil from the parking lot working its way into the city’s storm water system.

In the past, the focus of the city’s water quality control efforts was to ensure the contractor controls silt runoff during construction and that permanent control measures are put in place. The city left it up to the property owner to make sure that these water quality control devices were maintained and kept in proper working order after the project was complete.

What are the new Requirements?

 The city now requires the owner to enter into an Inspection and maintenance agreement of private storm water management facilities. What this requires of the owner is to maintain things such as oil skimmers and detention ponds. This agreement must be signed by the owner, notarized, and recorded at the Register of Deeds’ office. One interesting feature of this agreement is that it gives the city the right to come onto your property, inspect your storm water quality control features and notify you of any deficiencies. The property owner then will have thirty days to make corrections. Should the property owner fail to make those corrections, the city then has the right to make those corrections and invoice the owner for the cost of those corrections and also for the cost of the enforcement action.

Another new requirement involves a form titled “BMP (Best Management Practices) Tracking for New Construction and Redevelopment form”. This form outlines what storm water quality control features are on site and what maintenance will be done by the owner to keep these features in proper working order. In my opinion, this is actually a good idea. In my many years of building, I can tell you that instructing owners on the proper maintenance related to storm water quality control features has not been a common priority.

It’s All About the Delivery

As I have preached to the Strauss team, how you deliver a project is as important as what it looks like in the end and the timeliness of turning the building over to the owner. As a proud father, I have watched my wife deliver three children. I saw the dedication of nurses, doctors, and, in our case, a midwife, in making sure the deliveries happened successfully with a minimal amount of pain and complications. Through a well designed program, the hospital educated us as to what we could expect on delivery day. Our city administrators who handle the storm water program could take some lessons from the well-trained medical field. The city did not announce the additions to the requirements for a land disturbance permit in advance. You literally found out about the new requirements after submitting for the permit. There wasn’t even an updated checklist provided to contractors or engineers outlining these new requirements. As I said before, these new requirements were fed to you as you slowly went through the process. Unfortunately, this led to delays of several weeks in obtaining a land disturbance permit simply because no one outside of city officials was aware of these new requirements.

The Final Verdict

I think the new requirements are well intentioned and will make property owners better aware of maintaining their storm water quality control features. No doubt, a few property owners may have heartburn signing an agreement with the city that will be recorded on their deed. In the end, if you keep your property up, there shouldn’t be any issues. My contest with the new requirements is not with the product, but with the delivery. The city could have achieved good will and smoother implementation for the new requirements by preparing an educational program for builders prior to rolling out the new requirements. Most builders know it is important to keep their customers in the loop and to educate them as to what to expect on their building project—this is part of a customer’s expectation in a business deal. Most private business owners also know that their business lives or dies in their ability to meet customer expectations. By better educating the construction community about the new requirements, the city could have aided local businesses in meeting customer expectations, and allowed the new requirements to make a positive first impression.

Trouble: Is It Opportunity or Just Plain Trouble?

I was in a local office building last week and noticed a sign over a door that read “Trouble Is Opportunity”. As I was expecting to see a company name in its place, this phrase caught my attention just like it was designed to do. It caused me to reflect on the troubles my company has faced over the years how many we were able to turn into opportunities and how many we treated simply as trouble. Today’s blog will focus on turning your troubles into opportunities.

As much as we strive for perfection in the construction industry, we know that avoiding trouble is sometimes unattainable.  In fact, the system recognizes this and has developed fail-safes such as a RFI (Request for Information) that contractors send to architects asking for them to clarify information on their drawings. Architects issue addenda providing additional or revised information. The one that gets a property owner’s attention is the change order, which often adds cost to the project for changes to any number of details. But the trouble I want to talk about today is the kind where your company has just messed up. You’ve made a mistake and there’s nobody to blame but yourself. How you handle trouble can separate your company from other contractors.

In the sense that there is not a line item in bid estimates for mistakes, no contractor plans for trouble. Most project managers will not factor in time lost to correcting mistakes into their project schedule. As a business owner, I’ve learned that time spent preparing for mistakes can ease the trouble that may follow. That’s right: you should spend as much time preparing for mistakes as you do in preventing them.

In effort to prepare for trouble, we regularly send our employees for first aid training so they can respond and assist if there is an injury on the job. We train our supervisors in how to respond to many types of emergencies on a project. We do this in the event of a dangerous situation, but we also spend a large amount of time on safety training for employees to keep accidents from happening in the first place—this is preemptive troubleshooting.

Once a problem has been identified, quick and decisive action should be implemented to make corrections and turn the trouble into opportunity. Good communication with the design professionals and the owner is essential. If you don’t have a solution, it is wise to approach the design team and ask for guidance. When problems occur, it is also a good time for a teaching session with employees so that the root cause of the problem can be identified and training implemented to keep from repeating the same problems in the future.

This same approach is essential in how your company handles warranty claims. Quick, decisive action will be appreciated by your client. Remember that this is the same client that will be talking to prospective clients about the service you provided on their project.

I believe owners would love to say that their builder completed their project without any problems. I also believe that owners greatly appreciate a contractor that is quick to recognize a mistake and takes prompt, decisive action to correct those mistakes. Most often the choice is yours: turn trouble into opportunity or just treat trouble as trouble.

To Renovate, or Not to Renovate Part 2

After completing the initial analysis of a building targeted for renovation, a good next step will be arriving at an accurate construction budget. Determining whether or not the project is financially feasible is key to a renovation project. An accurate renovation budget will allow you to make the best business decision regarding whether or not to proceed with the project or move on to another site.

As I’ve noted in other posts, a construction budget is often used to determine loan amounts and also to project debt service for future business budgets. How do you get an accurate budget you can count on for future business planning? The easiest and most surefire way is to engage a contractor with an extensive track record in renovation projects. If you are not totally familiar with a contractor’s background, ask the contractor to list several projects similar in nature to yours. You can then visit these projects and get a feel for the contractor’s work. You can also ask the owners or occupants of these buildings about the contractor and what they experienced on their project.

These contractors have experience with many different types of structures and will have knowledge as to what alterations a building can or can’t sustain. They know how to deal with structural and environmental issues and they will have the ability to factor building code upgrades into the budget. An experienced renovation contractor will also have extensive knowledge in Life Safety Code issues that can be tricky with older buildings. They will be more familiar with the various details needed to create an accurate, all-inclusive budget—a budget you can take to the bank with confidence. 

What does it cost to have renovation budgets prepared? It depends on your intentions regarding the selection of the contractor. Some owners wish to keep their options wide open and not feel obligated to the contractor who prepared the budget. If that is the case, ask the contractor for a proposal to prepare a budget. For most projects, it should cost no more than a few thousand dollars to prepare a budget. Most often, owners work with both a contractor and a design firm in order to prepare a construction budget and a design concept. If the project moves forward, the team has been selected and is ready to move forward. In these cases, we consider the budgeting provided as a value added service to our clients. There is no charge for our budgeting service as we know we’re assisting a potential client to help make a project happen.

I have been involved in renovation projects where the owner has requested prospective budgets from two or three contractors. Often there can be wide range in budgeted cost from one contractor to the other. Why is this? Contractors make a large amount of assumptions in preparing a budget, which can vary from one contractor to another. One contractor may be more conservative in his budget approach, preferring to give you a larger number that he feels comfortable will cover the cost of a project in effort to avoid surprises down the road. Other contractors will view budgeting as a semi-bidding process, and try to come up with a lower budgeted cost so their services seem more attractive to the owner.

As an owner, how do you narrow down a wide range of budget numbers to find the “right one”? Do the same thing you should do even if you’re only considering one construction budget; Compare your budget cost against historical cost for similar projects. If your contractor has extensive renovation experience, he will have done this before his budget presentation. Otherwise, your design professional can provide information to help you make this determination.

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of a renovation project is marrying a construction budget to an owner’s desired scope of work. Often, I have prepared budgets for owners only to learn that my budgeted cost is 50 to 100 percent greater than what the owner expected. This starts a process somewhat like a dance to see if the contractor can arrive at a budget that matches a scope of work acceptable to the owner. This dance can be a slow, refined waltz or a rapid, complex Bolero.

An experienced renovation contractor can make this portion of the budget process as smooth as possible, and will be better prepared to offer suggestions and alternatives that might aid in closing the gap between the owner’s desired spending limit and an acceptable scope of work. At this stage in particular you will also want your contractor to work closely with the design team to make sure everyone is on the same page as to what work can be done within the budget limits.

A vital tool to help you get a realistic idea of whether or not the project is financially feasible for you is to include a contingency, or financial safety net, in your overall budget. An experienced renovation contractor can help reduce change orders, but he can’t make them go away. There will be some added costs along the way, so working an estimate for those into your initial budget can help cover any unforeseen costs or changes in the scope of work.

I’m sure you’re curious about how a renovation project compares to having a baby. Many of my clients have heard me make this analogy, so it may be a repeat for some readers, but I believe it can be helpful. Think of the pre-construction phase of a renovation project as the nine-month pregnancy. There is a lot of planning going on in preparation of the baby’s arrival. Think of the actual construction portion of the project as the delivery. There will be some pain involved, but an experienced renovation contractor will be alert to pitfalls along the way, and can keep that pain to a minimum.

To Renovate, or Not to Renovate? That is the question.

To Renovate, or Not to Renovate? That is the question.

(And the subject for today’s blog)

How many of you have experienced a renovation project either at your home or place of business? Like many of you, I have experienced both. In fact, the Strauss Company cut its teeth on renovation work. Our company was established about the same time the downtown renovation began in Chattanooga. Along the way we have learned a lot about renovation work and how to make it successful for both the owner and the contractor.

Today we will explore the necessary steps for a successful renovation project and what the owner, architect and contractor can and should do to insure that the project is, in fact, a success (and that everyone is still on good speaking terms at the end of the project). In this series of posts, we’re going to parallel this renovation analysis with having a baby. Keep in mind, I’m not a doctor. But I did once stay in a Holiday Inn Express.

Renovating buildings can be exciting, exasperating and frustrating all in the same day. However, with proper pre-construction planning and accurate budgeting, it’s possible to keep headaches and financial setbacks to a minimum. All construction projects require good planning and budgeting, but none more so than renovation work. Why? Because there are more unknowns with renovation work. The goal for your design team and contractor should be to eliminate and or clearly define all the unknowns prior to the commencement of construction. As an owner, you want be able to go to the bank with a high level of confidence in the construction budget numbers provided by your building professional. So where do we start?

Building Survey – Step One

I can’t tell you how many old buildings I have been through in downtown Chattanooga, but I have been through a lot of them. I’m often asked by clients to survey a building to give my impression of the suitability of a structure for renovation. So what do I look for? Well, there are a lot of things to consider when surveying a building.

First, I look at the structural condition of a building—are the floors level, walls plumb, ceilings, roofs and walls free of cracks and sagging? All of these are indicators of settlement in a building. I will also want to understand what the owner’s intended use is for a building so I can get a feel for what structural reworking may be required.

Interestingly, some building types renovate much better than others. I have found that buildings composed mostly of masonry and concrete renovate much easier than wood framed structures. Not always the case, but most masonry and concrete structures seem to hold up better to the elements and the neglect often associated with older buildings.

While doing a structural analysis of the building, we’ll also want to identify any materials that may contain asbestos. The removal of these types of materials can add significantly to the overall renovation cost. So if you are looking at a building to purchase and renovate, it will pay to have an asbestos survey done before your due diligence period expires.

Probably the most overlooked component of a building analysis is a codes review of the existing structure. A significant renovation most often requires an update to meet present day building codes. Building codes are updated every two or three years and they are significantly more stringent today than they were just twenty to thirty years ago. The building you are considering purchasing and renovating may need a fire sprinkler system added. It may not have the required amount of emergency exits and it may need to be updated to current handicap access requirements.

Chattanooga switched to the International Building Code (IBC) several years ago. It is far more stringent regarding seismic (think earthquakes) requirements than the old Southern Standard Building Code. So if you want to open load-bearing walls for windows or storefronts, there may be more structural work required than you were expecting.

As an owner, what is the best way to ensure this building analysis is done properly? One method is to have a contractor, architect, environmental engineer and perhaps a structural engineer perform an initial inspection of your building and give you their opinions of its suitability for renovation. I have been part of this team approach many times and have seen it work quite well. After initial review, this team can recommend any further investigation that may be needed and then they will be ready to assist as you move forward to initial design and cost budgeting. There are certainly other approaches, but in my experience, this one seems to provide the most accurate and comprehensive projections for budgeting and construction.

Once you have completed the building analysis, if you’re still game for the project, what’s the next step? I’ll outline that in my next post, and also delve into the reasons a renovation project is like having a baby.