Building Officials, the Lagay System, and Other Rants

As a person whose work is directly affected by the local goverment building official, I am really not surprised about having a 5 year old, 8 storey building collapse in the Philippines (see post below). It was good that no one was injured when the SAI Building collapsed. But property has been damaged and it will be an unpolluted day in Manila before the poor souls residing in / operating in the building get any restitution for their losses.

We've got a clearly defined National Building Code that we had to study in college, and practically memorize to pass the board exams (hah! thats another rant). In practice, people see the building code as a SUGGESTION and not a law. Everyone is to blame, the owners, the city government, architects, contractors, and even me for accepting this crappy system.

In our company, were strict about code compliance and we make sure that all bases are covered int hat aspect. Does that help get our Building Permits passed? NOPE!

In the cities weve built in, money talks. It doesnt matter how code compliant you are, if you dont fork over the grease money, your plans will rot on the desk of the City Engineer. By the same method of approval, plans in violation of the code will get approved as long as you pay enough money. We've had our plans sit for weeks on the City Engineer's desk because he "wasnt available" to sign it. It gets pretty tiring when you have to constantly explain to the client the reason for the differential between the Permit Cost and the Official Receipt figures.

And filing for permits in December? Forget it. We had a rush project where we filed in December. Refrigerator please. Humph.

So, what to do? I am getting tired of all the ranting but do I dare disturb the universe?