Thursday, September 19, 2019

Building Officials Association of SC tackles education, legislation

People expect safety from the buildings they occupy — the places where they live, work and play. Rarely does anyone enter a building and wonder whether its design, its construction materials, or even its wiring and fire suppression systems, pose a threat. 

 The hundreds of licensed building officials, inspectors and plans examiners in South Carolina have the job of making sure that building safety isn’t compromised, and the Building Officials Association of South Carolina supports them in this vitally important work. 

 The Building Officials Association of South Carolina, which affiliated with the Municipal Association of South Carolina in 2017, focuses on training for its members. The affiliate's 2019 Annual Meeting, for example, covered such topics the International Building Code requirements for building size, sprinklers and mixed-use occupancies, as well as what the IBC has to say about building rental spaces and making them fire resistant. 

 The affiliation between BOASC and the Municipal Association has led to a greater focus by each group on State House legislation that impacts building regulations in South Carolina. The BOASC membership and the Municipal Association’s legislative team stay involved with lawmakers and stakeholders on the issues, and testify at hearings on pending legislation. Here are some examples of building regulation bills that are active in the current 2019 – 2020 session and that have received attention and input from BOASC and the Municipal Association: 
  • H4327 – This bill came about because of concerns that IBC standards for sprinkler systems are too burdensome in cases where a commercial kitchen is used in the agritourism industry. In simpler terms, this would apply to a barn that’s rented out for weddings, and food is prepared at the barn. This scenario can easily lead to the property owner being required to install a sprinkler system costing $30,000 or more. BOASC engaged with the SC Building Codes Council and General Assembly to modify the number of attendees that would trigger the sprinkler requirement. As currently amended, the bill’s threshold is 300 people. For lower numbers of people, other safety measures, like smoke detectors and fire extinguishers would still be required. 
  • S796 – This bill emerged from the concern that the requirement in state law for the SC Building Codes Council to update residential building codes every three years is too burdensome for home builders. The current bill changes the timeline for updates to the residential codes after the most recent publication of code updates.
  • S757 – This bill would require all municipalities and county governments looking to adopt ordinances that would impact the cost of building housing to first prepare an analysis of the impact of the potential costs. Preparing such reports could itself be costly for local governments whenever their councils take action on home construction. 

 Those interested in getting involved with the Building Officials Association of SC can learn more here.
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Thursday, September 5, 2019

Loss Control Helps Keep City Staff and Property Safe

In the world of insurance and risk management, loss control is exactly what it sounds like — efforts made to make losses of property or life, as well as injuries, as small as possible. Loss control helps keep people safe, and helps to stop potential increases in the cost of insurance.

 The Municipal Association’s Risk Management Services, which is the home of two self-funded insurance programs — the SC Municipal Insurance Trust and the SC Municipal Insurance and Risk Financing Fund — has a loss control division focusing entirely on ways to keep the people and the properties that serve municipalities safe. 

 “A good safety and risk management process helps identify, analyze and monitor potential risks and take actions to mitigate the impact of potential losses,” said Heather Ricard, director of Risk Management Services. “The loss control staff exist to help municipalities develop and implement safety programs that will protect property and save lives.” 

 Loss control training can take many different forms. SCMIT and SCMIRF members have access to tools, like model fire and law enforcement policies and procedures, on-site technical assistance visits as well as online and print education resources. A safety calendars — one for general risk management and another for high-risk critical tasks for law enforcement — is released each year to members as an additional training tool. These calendars draw attention to risk management actions cities and towns can take every month. Members also have access to LocalGovU, a free online training platform that has 90 classes which focus on municipal risk.

 The response to resistance simulator is perhaps the most high profile of the available training opportunities. It places law enforcement officers in situations where they must make split-second decisions about the level of force they should use. This Uptown article explains more about the training. 

Other services are available to all cities and towns. Loss control staff contribute to the Risk Management Services RiskLetter newsletter, which can give city and town officials’ ideas of how to better minimize operational risks. The article topics in the recent Summer 2019 issue, for example, include these: 


Venyke Harley serves as loss control manager for Risk Management Services. Recently, John Ciesielski joined as loss control consultant, having previously worked for the South Carolina branch of OSHA.
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