Newsreleases

City of Santa Clara Celebrates National Building Safety Week

Across the nation, communities will celebrate National Building Safety Week, May 5th through May 11th, 2008. The City of Santa Clara Building Inspection Office will participate in the celebration to increase public awareness and promote the understanding and value of building safety. This year’s events will emphasize the significance of code compliance.

"The important work that inspectors and plan checkers do is often overlooked until a catastrophic tragedy occurs," said Sheila Lee, Building Official for the City of Santa Clara. "When plan checkers review construction documents prior to permit issuance and building inspectors inspect buildings during construction, we help to ensure that the buildings where we live, work and play are built safely and are in compliance with the latest adopted building codes." The City of Santa Clara Building Inspection Office issues more than 6000 permits and handles more than 27,000 inspections each year.

As of January 2008, California has starting enforcing a new set of building construction codes. Many citizens, contractors and designers are not aware of all the new regulations and have questions regarding the new codes. Santa Clara’s Building Inspection Office will offer a number of free workshops on the new code regulations during Building Safety Week. Plan checkers, building inspectors, the City’s building official and the City’s fire marshal will be available to answer questions during the workshops. Simpson Strong-Tie® company will provide a display of seismic retrofit and other new hardware during the events at the City’s Permit Center.

Workshops will be held at the Permit Center at 1500 Warburton Ave. from 3 – 5 p.m. The Permit Center will be open for business during the workshops.

• May 6th – New Regulations on Electrical, Plumbing and Mechanical Codes by Senior Building Inspector Tim Owens and Acting Senior Building Inspector Andrei Oustinov.
• May 7th – New Regulations on Single Family Houses and Existing Commercial and Industrial Buildings by Senior Plans Examiner Bounmy Soumountha and Principal of West Coast Code Consultants Giyan Senaratne.
• May 8th – New Regulations on Fire Safety and Tankless Water Heater Design by Fire Marshal Martin Von Raesfeld and Combination Inspector Jeffrey Britton.

Spaces for the workshops are limited. Please RSVP by May 2, 2008 by calling (408) 615-2440.