Feature

by Emily Landes & Sean Pritchard

Isam Hasenin had his work cut out for him when he took over as the new director of San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection in March. The department’s reputation was sullied by corruption scandals and increasingly long waits for permits and plan reviews. But, in an exclusive interview with SF Apartment Magazine Managing Editor Emily Landes and SFAA Government and Community Affairs Director Sean Pritchard, the former chief building official for the City of San Diego explains why he’s not worried about improving the public’s perception of DBI. Instead, he’s focused on a departmental overhaul—including an emphasis on increased oversight, quicker turnaround times and even building code changes—and he claims he doesn’t need to hire new staff to reach his ambitious goals.

Q: Why did you want to be the director of DBI?

Isam Hasenin: I heard about some of the ethical issues that had come up in the past, and my understanding was that that was behind us. It seems that we’re at a good point where there’s consensus among politicians, members of the industry, the public, staff and the Building Inspection Commission—which is my boss—that there is a need to move forward and bring the department back to the basics: plan review and inspection for the projects submitted here. So, I thought that was a good time in history to be involved in the department.

Q: How has the transition been going?

IS: It’s been good. I’m enjoying almost unanimous support from all these different groups I mentioned. Staff is excited about making the changes because they see that they’re going to make DBI a better place to work and improve the reputation of the department. The industry, customers and stakeholders have been interested and anxious to see some of those changes happen. We have a long way to go, but I think within a year people will be able to see major changes, and in two or three years it will be an entirely different department.

Q: How do you plan to get there?

IS: I always say, “The devil is in the details.” It’s not just one thing; it’s a lot of little things that you have to do consistently to make a difference. For example, I restructured the department into multiple divisions so that we’re more accountable and have better leadership. We embarked on a business process re-engineering, analyzing the different components of our process, its strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement. At the end of this process, we’ll come up with a list of recommendations and an implementation plan, which will be approved by the steering committee of that process. This is being sponsored by the mayor and his office.

We’re also looking at the hiring process, the fee structure, training issues and improving the morale of the department. We’re looking at changing the physical environment of the office. We’re moving our permit center from the first floor of 1660 Mission St. to a space next door because it provides a bigger space where we can provide better customer flow. We’ve rolled out a customer service initiative, which will include many different components to improve customer service. So, we’re doing a lot. There is a grand plan of where we want to be in a few years.

I know there are a lot of doubters out there and I appreciate their skepticism because I guess we had a lot of false starts over the years. The only thing that I can say is that time will tell, hopefully. I’m committed to what I’m doing here. I have no agendas, political or otherwise. I am here as a professional administrator of a building department, and that’s what I intend to be.

Q: How long do you think it will take to change people’s perceptions about the department?

IS: I’m asked that a lot and I always say, “I’m not doing anything here at all to change that perception.” People may be doubtful now, but we’re going to make our changes and improvements, and excel at customer service and eventually people will come around. How long will it take? I’m not going to be concerned with that. We’re just going to do our job, and in my experience people will notice and give you credit for it. But I have no goals of making all these improvements to change how we look in the newspaper. That is a dangerous path to take, to focus just on how you look rather than making the substantial changes that you need to make for your customers.

Q: Do you need to hire more people to make these changes?

IS: No, my opinion is that we’re not at that point yet. The industry is going to support raising fees if we need more people to get better service, but my take on that, initially, is that we don’t need it. I’m going to look at better using what we already have. I’m going to make the changes that I think we need to make. Then we’ll see if we need to hire more staff. Right now, we’re just reshuffling how we do business.

Q: Many city department heads have voiced concerns about mass retirements. Do you share those concerns?

IS: We continue to have retirements, so we plan for that. When I said that we weren’t hiring new people, I meant that we are not creating any new positions. We’re also going into a period of declining revenues as the construction activity has dropped, so we’re monitoring our revenues and workloads and taking our time filling positions as they become vacant. But we can move aggressively, if there’s a need. There’s also a process in the city where we can hire back retirees on a part-time basis.

Q. Many landlords feel that there are too many permits required for what they consider simple maintenance tasks. Have you addressed those concerns yet?

IS: No, I haven’t yet, but it is absolutely on my plate to determine what work should be exempt from permits. I have a feeling that right now we are requiring permits for work that should be exempt. The way I look at it, we need to ask the question: are we adding any value by being a part of the process? If the answer is yes, then we should require permits. If the answer is no, and it’s just a matter of tracking and bureaucracy, then I don’t want to be involved with it. So, that’s the test we’re going to run. It may require a change to the San Francisco Building Code, or it could just be a policy change.

But I would like to let apartment owners know that they should always do work with permits. A lot of times they feel it’s minor stuff, but sometimes, with electrical improvements, for example, there are life and safety issues. As we’re making these improvements, we will make the process easier to navigate and use, so we encourage people to come in and pull permits. It’s really a win-win situation. I will also recommend that if people are doing major projects, they should hire an architect and come in with professional plans. That will make the process a lot easier.

We’ve also rolled out a customer service program called “Guaranteed Second Opinion.” That means that at any time during the process, if you, as a customer, don’t like the decision I’m giving you, you can ask for a second opinion from someone higher up. There are grey areas that come up often, so you want to make sure you give the customers the benefit of the doubt and the benefit of having that issue raised to a higher level for resolution.

Q: Many landlords also have concerns that tenants come to DBI because of personal landlord-tenant issues, rather than code compliance. How can we stop personal issues from ending up at DBI?

IS: As long as we expeditiously and accurately handle those disputes, and then move forward, that’s the best way to serve everybody. This way the landlords know where they stand and hopefully the tenants know that we did our job professionally. I tell my staff a lot of times, “You are here to do your job. It’s never personal.” A lot of times, we are asking people to do things they don’t want to do, so you have to understand where they are coming from. But you can’t take it personally or you won’t be able to deal with the customer.

Q: Are there big differences between San Diego and San Francisco building codes?

IS: There are more local amendments here than in San Diego. There are good reasons for some of them: topography, the age of the city and the smaller lots. But one of the challenges I gave to my staff was to minimize the local amendments and, for the most part, use the model code and only have local amendments when it’s absolutely necessary.

Q: How long will it be before we see these changes?

IS: On January 1, 2008, the International Building Code will go into effect; so we’re trying to match the changes we want to make at the local amendment level to fit in with that package. It should be in the next few months.

Q: What other changes are you most looking forward to making?

IS: We’re going to dramatically shorten the turnaround times for plan checks because that’s been taking too long. I think that’s going to have the biggest impact for customers because time is money.

Q: What have been some of the biggest surprises since taking the job?

IS: One surprise was the lack of leadership and direction in the department. It seemed to me that that was lacking for many years. So, hopefully, the changes we’ve made and will make can provide that direction. We’re requiring that senior staff do audits, work with their staff on a daily basis and provide training on an ongoing basis. Senior-level staff have also been meeting with me twice a week to work on code interpretations, which is how we create consistency so that people know what to do the next time an issue comes up.
We also want to create a culture where staff members feel comfortable giving opinions. I was surprised that a lot of people didn’t want to give opinions because they were afraid they weren’t going to be backed up and because of the lack of direction in terms of how to handle issues.

But I was also pleasantly surprised with the level of competence, technical abilities, enthusiasm and professionalism of the staff that we have here. Despite the negative press that the department has gotten, the staff members are mostly good people who want to do their jobs and feel good about where they work.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. Emily Landes is the managing editor of SF Apartment Magazine and Rental Housing. Sean Pritchard is the government and community affairs director for SFAA. Copyright © 2007 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.