Checking All the Boxes
A new program will empower British Columbia’s building officials to become community champions of high-performance construction.
Across British Columbia, roughly 1,000 or so local-government professionals serve as the final check and balance in ensuring new buildings perform as advertised.
They’re building inspectors and plan checkers — formally, “building officials” — and they ensure new buildings are safe, accessible, and meet the energy-efficiency performance requirements of the BC Energy Step Code or the prescriptive/performance requirements of the BC Building Code.
Dave Schioler has their backs. Earlier this year, he took the reins of the Building Officials Association of British Columbia (BOABC) the profession’s industry association. We asked him to talk us through how he’s ensuring his members will be ready when the province’s new energy-efficiency performance requirements kick in starting in 2022.
What role will building officials play in the shift to net-zero energy-ready buildings?
Right now, our members play a significant leadership role in ensuring our province’s buildings are safe, well-made, and energy-efficient. They’ve also been helping support the transition to higher-performance buildings. In 2017, our association entered into an agreement with the province to ensure that we will steadily improve education, training, and examining in the profession. As the new energy performance requirements come online, we’re committed to increasing professionalism, competence, and consistency in code interpretation.
When it comes to confirming a given building meets the code, does the BC Energy Step Code’s performance-based approach — including energy modeling and airtightness testing — make life easier for a building inspector?
I don’t think it’s a question of easier, but it does make a better result. It’s one thing to say, “Yes, this [energy conservation measure] should work properly.” Now with testing, you are going to know it is working properly. The move to performance-based building codes with the BC Energy Step Code means the energy-performance investments being made are going to last longer.
Under the CleanBC climate plan, the province is requiring that all new construction will need to be 20 percent more energy efficient than what it requires in the 2018 BC Building Code. Are your members ready?
There is a fair amount of training needed. Overwhelmingly, our members work in municipalities, and local governments each move at their own pace. Sometimes it’s based on budget, sometimes it’s a factor of what education is available to them. But we know there’s a gap there, and that’s where we are stepping in. The BOABC is entering into an agreement with BC Hydro to fund a whole new program of BC Energy Step Code training for building officials.
What’s that going to look like?
We’re calling it Energy Foundations. It’s going to be a comprehensive and strategic approach that will enable British Columbia’s building officials to really become high-performance building champions in their jurisdictions. It will empower them to be leaders in their municipalities, so they really champion better buildings. In the longer term, the program will transform into an accredited professional development program.
Are building officials required to take continuing professional development courses, like carpenters and architects, and many others do, to maintain their license?
Yes. In the arrangement that we now have with the province, by 2021 we will have formalized the Registry of Building Officials. We already have our own in-house registry. Each year, our members are obligated to report on their status of certification, whether they have passed exams, and taken the required 10 points of professional development. It’s all there now, but it’s being formalized. The Building Officials Association is moving from a volunteer-based and run organization to a volunteer-based, but professionally run, organization.
What will your membership look like in 2022, when the new performance requirements kick in?
We’ll have professionally educated, trained, and up-to-date building officials that are ensuring consistency in their interpretation of the BC Building Code, and ensuring safe, high-quality, and increasingly energy-efficient buildings. Their role will essentially become more important, and more ingrained in the process.
Like other professions, many of the baby boomer building inspectors out there will soon be retiring. Will there be enough officials out there to grab the baton?
I believe, in British Columbia, we will ultimately need twice as many building officials as we have today. In the past, building official was typically a role that plumbers and builders might move into late in their careers. That’s got to change, and it’s going to change. We’re going to place a lot of emphasis on increasing the standing of building officials in the building professions, to ensure this is a respected career path for young people to consider.
How will you do that? How do you make building official a more attractive and interesting opportunity for someone coming up out of school?
The association is going to play a large role in recruiting young people to become building officials for local governments. We’ll need to invest in marketing to explain what the role is, and why it is so important as we transition to very high-performance buildings. We’ll also need to collaborate with other building professionals — the geoscientists, the architects, the designers. We’re all facing this attrition challenge, and we’ll all be working together to make sure that we can help one another out as we work through it.
To stay in the loop on the BC Energy Step Code, sign up here to receive the Energy Step Code Stakeholder Update in your inbox on the first Monday of each month. For more on the BC Energy Step Code, visit energystepcode.ca.
Glave Communications produced this post on behalf of the Training and Communications Subcommittee of the Energy Step Code Council, with resource support from BC Hydro. In an effort to increase awareness and understanding of the BC Energy Step Code, the Energy Step Code Council is sharing information on how and why builders and communities are using the new standard. Local governments may use the BC Energy Step Code, if they wish, to incentivize or require a level of energy efficiency in new construction that goes above and beyond the requirements of the BC Building Code.
