How Building Officials Can Prepare Their Successors

The job of a building official can be both rewarding and trying. Anyone in this field will tell you that no two days are ever the same. For building officials, the experiences are even more varied, demanding and inspiring. 

Jason Bush, CBO, Building Official for four cities in Oregon (Cottage Grove, Veneta, Creswell and Coburg), has found that soft skills are especially important to the success of any building official. He noted the psychology and politics that go into the job, which regularly involve the challenge of answering the “why’s” from homeowners and contractors. 

The questions could be as basic as, “Why do I need a permit?” They often get more specific: “Why do I need a structural permit when I don’t have a beam in my project?” 

These are some of the things Bush, the recipient of the 2021 ICC Raising the Profile Award, thinks about when he ponders his retirement. He has his eye set on a very specific date: January 2, 2027. This gives him another couple of years to prepare Melany Klemmer to take his place. 

Klemmer is currently the Residential Building Inspector and Senior Permit Specialist for the City of Cottage Grove, OR. Bush noticed her potential as a building official when they first started working together roughly three years ago. 

“You can tell the caliber of someone,” said Bush. “You can tell if they’re not just inspector or plans examiner material. If they’ve got a good way about their organizational and operational skills, you can tell pretty quickly that they might have the ability to become a building official in them.” 

Klemmer believes that Bush started to think of her as his possible successor after discovering her drive, desire and willingness to learn. 

“Also, my work ethic and how I just operate on a day-to-day basis,” said Klemmer. “I think that’s when he decided I was a good candidate and started calling me his assistant building official.” 

Bush added that Klemmer genuinely loves her job and “dedicates a great portion of her personal life to her career,” frequently coming in early and staying late to get things done. 

Her career began in 2002 when she joined Comfort Flow Heating, an HVAC services company, as a delivery driver. She worked her way up to Commercial Project Administrator, a role that allowed her to gain hands-on experience on the permit side of building safety. 

“I applied for all mechanical permits throughout the State of Oregon, did contracts, billings, etc.,” said Klemmer. “I was very familiar with the other side of permits, but most specifically mechanical. I enjoyed it, so when my time was up at Comfort Flow, I started looking for a job involving building permits.” 

Klemmer’s interest in building permits led her to Cottage Grove in 2018. She isn’t sure she wants to be a building official, but Bush is training her regardless. His guidance serves as an invaluable blueprint for how other building officials can prepare their successors. 

Get Engaged with the World of Building Safety 

In addition to having the right skills and expertise, aspiring building officials should also get involved with the appropriate organizations. Klemmer, for example, is on the board of the Oregon Permit Technicians Association. She’s also heavily involved with PermitTechNation, which was founded by permit technicians across America via networking through the International Code Council and their Annual Conferences.  

Klemmer also attended the Chapter Leadership Academy at the Code Council’s Leadership Week & 2024 Committee Action Hearings – Group A #1 (April 5-16) in Orlando, Florida.  

“These are some of the things I feel are important to prepare her to be a building official,” said Bush. 

Learn From Inspectors in Other Jurisdictions 

Bush also encouraged Klemmer to go out in the field as much as possible, but not exclusively in Cottage Grove. He wanted her to work with and see how inspectors operated in neighboring jurisdictions. 

“It’s like a huge community toolbox,” said Bush. “The more inspectors you get an opportunity to accompany in field inspections, the more opportunity you’ll get to say, ‘Wow that’s a good way to do something.’ Or, ‘I’m never going to do that, that didn’t work out too well for that guy.’ This has given Melany a ton of experience condensed into a small amount of time. I think that’s a pretty good way to get her prepared for bigger and better things.” 

Dig Into the Behind-The-Scenes Details 

Code expertise is just one part of being a building official. Another part involves the behind-the-scenes details, from knowing the budget to working with any tools or software used by your jurisdiction. Bush stressed the importance of learning as much as possible but acknowledged that experience is something that can only be attained over time. 

“It’s like when you start out in any job,” said Bush. “You start out as a permit specialist or building inspector, and next thing you know you’re plumbing, mechanical, structural. Then you get into commercial and work your way up. When you do that, you pretty much know all the jobs you’ve left behind, and it solidifies what you’re going to do when you become a building official.” 

By understanding the inner workings of building safety, and by knowing how to research tough problems and come up with solutions, Klemmer is preparing herself for a leadership role. While Bush would like her to take over as building official, he said the skills and knowledge she has gained are positioning her for other roles as well, including plans examiner supervisor or inspector supervisor.

“She’s like my assistant building official,” said Bush. “She reminds me of meetings, she does her research for the Code Council reports. If she’s got a piece of plumbing or a device she’s never seen, she knows how to dig all that stuff up and do her own research.” 

Learn How to Overcome the Job’s Biggest Challenges 

Bush has been especially committed to making sure that Klemmer is ready for the challenges she’s likely to encounter hundreds of times throughout her career. One of the biggest involves the dilemma of trying to inspect something that can’t be easily inspected. 

“Let’s say you have a shear wall or sewer that’s covered up before it can be inspected,” Bush surmised. “How are you going to inspect it? How do you work your way through this problem?” 

Bush said that young inspectors are often faced with this dilemma, which can be a bit overwhelming to them. His view is that, if it’s a problem you’re going to encounter again (and this one certainly is), you need to figure out a solution that works well every time. 

“Another important aspect of investigating missed inspections or covered work is who are we dealing with,” said Bush. “[Is it] someone new to your jurisdiction, someone you worked with a few times, or possibly someone you worked with for 20-30 years?” 

To keep things as easy as possible, Bush breaks these issues up into a few different categories. For vital fire and life safety items like smoke detectors, emergency egress windows, handrails and guardrails, he expects a proper correction to be made. The same is true for foundational and structural elements. 

“If we screw up on the foundation or underfloor framing, there’s a good chance the rest will not perform as [intended],” said Bush. 

A sewer, on the other hand, presents a different challenge. It’s not structural, so he tries to avoid making the contractor dig it up. He may look for evidence that it’s really there and search for the tracer wire or ask for pictures that prove it was installed.  

“You can accept some of those things if it doesn’t involve a safety hazard or something that will get the property owner sued,” Bush explained. “You quiz them, put them through the ringer. You may have them go out and get a plumbing contractor to give them a letter or perform a camera test, and we’ll accept that. But when it comes to the structural side, you can’t just accept something like that. You’ve got to do a little more research, maybe some destructive testing. Somebody may have to start digging it up so I can see that the foundation is below the frost line.” 

Once you figure out how to best tackle these issues, Bush said the whole experience becomes a bit smoother. 

“We try to treat everyone equally, and we do, except that you cannot treat a builder/developer the same as a homeowner or house flipper because their intentions and outcomes are not on an equal playing field,” Bush added. 

Listen Carefully to What Your Customers Say 

In many ways, building safety is a customer-facing industry. The customers (contractors, property owners, homeowners, etc.) aren’t buying a traditional product, but they do need the service and assistance of their local building safety professionals. In order to provide the best service possible, Bush said you have to listen. 

“You’re not just here, you listen to what somebody is saying,” Bush advised. “The way I look at it is, we’re part of our customer’s team. Whether I’m in a plans examiner, inspector or building official role, we’re there to help folks get through their project.” 

Bush encourages aspiring building officials to be proactive in their work and to go the extra mile. If a property owner wants to turn an auto supply shop into a restaurant, Bush will happily walk the building with them, knowing that the project will likely include multiple renovations. 

“Go get your design professional, your architect or engineer, and we’ll walk through the building,” said Bush. “You tell me what you want to do, what your goals are and what you envision, and we’ll help you reach that. We’ll give you the down-and-dirty answers, tell you what you’re going to need, worst-case scenarios. We’re not experts, we’re not project managers, but I find the more we’re involved in a project, the better the project usually comes out.” 

Klemmer concurred with Bush’s advice, noting that while anyone can be a building official by taking the necessary classes to learn the code, soft skills separate the good from the great. 

Learn The Meaning Behind The Code 

Lastly, Bush urged building safety professionals to learn the code’s meaning. This goes for everyone in the profession, not just current or future building officials. 

“One of the more important aspects of our job is how you interpret the code,” said Bush. “How do you read that section of the code and understand fully what they meant and what their intent was when they wrote it?” 

Both Bush and Klemmer have benefited from their involvement with the Code Council and said that going to the code hearings made a world of difference. 

“Getting that background and hearing the rebuttals and re-rebuttals at the code hearings really formed a solid background,” said Bush. “Now when you get those, ‘Why do I have to do that?’ questions, you won’t get frustrated and say, ‘Because the code says you got to do it.’ No, that’s not why you have to do it, there’s a reason behind it. And knowing that reason, and being able to explain it to people, they are so much more willing to do it right because they see the ramifications.” 

In short, knowing the reason behind the code is “instrumental in being able to interpret it,” Bush concluded. 

“And a building official makes hundreds of interpretations a week,” he said. “That’s pretty critical for their job.”

To learn more about the roles and responsibilities of building safety professionals, check out Week 4 of the Code Council’s Building Safety Month campaign, here.