4 minute read
Design Professionals Innovate to Meet the Needs of "The Deck Law"
By Scott Swinton
There are some events that make waves, and others cause tsunamis. The fatal structural failure of a balcony at 2020 Kittredge St. in Berkeley on June 16, 2015 was a tsunami event. Few outside the industry imagined that within four years of that tragic collapse nearly every HOA and apartment in California would be bracing for a financial deluge.
By September, after the June 2015 collapse, Berkeley’s Planning and Development, Building, and Safety Division of Housing Code Enforcement had already issued the Exterior Elevated Elements Inspection Guidelines and applied them broadly to nearly all multi-family structures in the city, including those within HOAs. Inspections and reports for those multi-family structures on all balconies, stairs, and walkways higher than six feet above adjacent grade became mandatory.
By the end of the decade, the state had gotten involved. SB-721 skated through the senate and nearly netted HOAs in 2018. Attorneys and lobbyists for the HOA industry fought their way out of that legislation, but in retrospect, they had only traded a frying pan for fire.
Barely preceding the incoming pandemic chaos, SB-326 shouldered its way onto the radar of managers and construction industry professionals in January of 2020. Those who had been involved with Berkeley’s E3 and recently SB-721 quickly realized that SB-326 would raise monumental challenges for HOAs.
A few alert construction management firms, architects, engineers, and attorneys began holding back-room meetings in an attempt to get out in front of the huge wave of frustration and angst that was racing along with hidden intensity. There were a lot of coffee-stained copies of SB-326 and deck sketches under daily scrutiny.
And then, it wasn’t hidden anymore. HOA budgets were shattering. Reserve studies began exploding, and once innocent-looking balconies and stairways were becoming lurking liabilities. Meanwhile, clever humans were doing what clever humans have always done. They were finding ways to work with, around, and through the obstacle.
The small segment of the construction industry qualified to work in HOAs was abuzz for months. Every contractor began wondering if a gangly goose had just laid the first of a grand series of golden eggs. Engineers and architects, already nervous and liability conscious, hovered between intrigued and aghast and began consulting with statisticians and attorneys. Construction managers lay awake at night trying to imagine how to organize the coming chaos, and then, something new happened.
The traditionally siloed segments of the construction industry began communicating. Cross-trade communication is, to some degree, a part of the traditional construction process, but “the deck law” drove contractors, architects, engineers, and construction managers to the same table like never before. The heavy liability burden of the law was forcing parties together who might have otherwise stood aloof awaiting their turn.
Not only was the industry turning a corner through collaboration, but the time was right for innovations in engineering, waterproofing, and design to shine. Perry Tabor of TEAC Engineering described the process as “bringing lessons learned forward,” and indeed, many lessons about how NOT to waterproof and design balconies have been learned in the past 20 years.
The race to develop multifamily housing in the 70s through the 90s combined with deeply flawed maintenance methods and schedules had provided construction design professionals with a wealth of case studies on how to refine designs and perfect reconstruction methodology. Innovation in guardrail design, waterproofing, and “surgical” repairs to minimize the effect on occupied units came none too soon as it turns out.
In truth, there was a certain inevitability to the arrival of “the deck law.” Construction design professionals in the HOA industry were already warning their customers that large-scale reconstruction was on the horizon – like it or not.
The tide was already racing out in anticipation of the incoming tsunami. When the wave hit, despite the liability concerns and legal ambiguities, the industry’s professionals were poised to rapidly pivot and innovate to meet the need.
Innovation has always set the best apart in any industry. Many HOA board members, no less the rank and file homeowner, are still unaware of their responsibility, liability, and obligation to maintain the structures that house their families. Innovation is on the horizon for that also, but while we wait for present and potential owners to begin understanding their burden of responsibility, the best of the industry’s design professionals are busy working to shore up the system from behind the scenes.
Scott Swinton
Scott Swinton is the General Contractor and Certified Construction Manager at Unlimited Property Services, Inc.
