appeals board agenda? seeing none, item f, adjournment. we have a motion to adjourn. >> before we adjourn, isn't there normally on the agenda a chance for us to bring matters to staff or ask questions or is that more for the bic >> it's more for the bic >> i'll do it on the bic, thanks. >> are all commissioners in favor of adjournment? >> aye, aye, . >> any opposed? we are now adjourned, it is 9.44 am and we will reconvene as the building inspection commission at 10:00 am. (meeting adjourned). . >> good morning, today is wednesday, october 21, 2015. this is the regular meeting of the building inspection commission. i would like to

remind everyone to please turn off all electronic devices. the first item on the agenda is roll call. president mccarthy, here. vice president mar, here. commissioner clinch, here. commissioner mccray, here. commissioner melgar, here. commissioner walker, here. commissioner lee, here. we have a quorum and the next item is president's announcements. >> good morning everybody and thank you for coming to the october 21, 2015 meeting. i have some president's announcements here and we will get into our business then. congratulations to director hui who in advance of the 26th annual observations of the loam ma prieta anniversary attended an event in chinatown to increase public awareness of the need to prepare for the next one. (inaudible) supervisor

district 5 and 10. there will be in addition to the already-awarded grants in chinatown with educational workshops are already on the way in helping san francisco ans prepare for the next big one. do read the october issue of the dbie news letter which features loam ma prieta anniversary activities. dbi emergency response coordination team who advocated dbi's department operations center, known as doc, on october 15th, as part of the great california shake out training day and enable staff to train, improve preparation and response skills so that we're ready for the next major earthquake. special thanks to director hui for the third annual state of the department and all dbi staff meeting on october 14, where he talked

about mayor lee's city of innovation theme and that need for all departments, including dbi, to think outside the box and take steps to improve our efficiency and to our customer service. director hui has also provided results of the recently completed customer perception survey, which included polling and a focus group of more than 1,100 dbi customers and which we found, which i found this incredible, to two-thirds strongly approve and approve of dbi professional services. roughly 5 percent disapprove so that is not a bad outcome for that survey and we should talk more a little bit about that and the questions that were asked. i know a lot of the commissioners would like to talk further on that. director hui also announced a total of 60dbi staff who reached 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 year anniversaries at

the city, so congratulations warm congratulations to them, thank you so much for your service. that's a long time. on october 24 director hui and other dbi staff will participate in the town hall with board president london breed, building code requirements, inspection code enforcement and new programs such as the legalization of illegal units and additional dreling units, which are known as adu's, mitigating san francisco's severe affordable housing crisis. director hui also had a round table discussion with media representatives of the san francisco neighborhood newspaper association last week, along with deputy director ed sweeney and dan lowrey the executive team explained the key responsibilities of dbi mandated to carry out on behalf of building safety as well as

respond to reporters' questions. thanks again to dbi staff, fire department staff and sfpuc staff who will be covering again on october 27 for the fourth public meeting of the board order interagency fire safety task force. with the final meeting scheduled for november 10, the task force will develop findings and recommendations to convey back to the board for improvements on fire and life safety in older multi unit buildings that we know are more at risk for serious injuries and fatalities. finally, just a reminder to the staff and managers to submit nominations for the dbi employee of the quarter for the quarter 3, 2015. please send your nomination forms to william strong at sfgov.org as soon as possible to enable employee recognition committee to choose our next winner in time for the november meeting.

madam secretary, that concludes my announcements. thank you. >> thank you, is there any public comment on the president's announcements? seeing none, item 3, general public comment. the bic will take public comment on matters within the commission's jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda. seeing none, item 4, discussion on othello permit and project tracking system. >> good morning, commissioners, my name is henry bartly, i am the project manager for the othello implementation on dbi on department technology. >> i'm sean buellen, also a project manager, helping on the project. >> last gave our update last

month. dbi has taken a decision to pause the activities with the vendor on the project. the reason, the main reason for that decision, which was supported in support and conjunction with the city administrator and the city cio, is that we find our selfs at this point in the project with the amount of work to be resolved and the remaining budget that we know that we don't have budget to deliver the project as currently scoped with the amount of work that we know is ahead of us. so, given that and the inability of the project team to set and commit to a firm timeline and be go live date, director hui had asked us to pause the activity so we don't incur any more charges and has requested that we bring in a third party

assessor to do an assessment of the project and provide recommendations and a plan for proceeding, getting the project on track and proceeding to a successful conclusion. sean is going to present the deck that you've been provided which goes into more detail around the basis for that decision. >> thank you, henry. commissioners, good morning. as henry said, on the first slide dbi will engage a third party to perform a project assessment. the primary objective is to determine what it will take to get a firm dollar amount and a firm date. some project activities going forward, we do have a number of testing items and a number of report development that is done internally. that activity will complete, we don't want to send the message that the project is totally stopped. internally we are continuing work on the project. >> can i pause you a second

there, pause, can we get that up on screen there, madam secretary so for the rest of the public i know people would like to see. continue with your presentation, sean. >> item 4, put up the overhead. >> that would be great. there, perfect, thank you. sorry, sean. >> no problem. it's the vendor activity has been paused until we complete the assessment. what trug erred this, the triggering action was some feedback that we received that any project funding, any project reserve, anything that might exist would be exhausted around the time we completed addressing all of the severity

1 and 2d defects. we knew further testing would be needed, we knew that would be further defects, so that basically meant there wasn't enough money to implement the project. the next slide, the open issues slide, this shows you that there is pretty severe increase in defects after we completed our testing in august. basically what that is showing you, there's a number of different sources. the defects, different types of defects are tracked in different logs, but the sum total is around 204 and the business definition of critical is it's critical for go live and there's no work alive so you have to do it or it is critical or might be a work around, but the work around is too onerous for the business to do. so we're looking at this list of 204 we're talking about severity 1 and 2 issues that the business says aren't

acceptable for go live. the punch list is a list of items that were arrived upon in april of 2015. some are projects that require their own work that basically address the number of functional gaps that were identified earlier this year. some examples you'll hear people talk about these, that's why we report on them. there are a list of 25 and the way to read this chart is if it's closed and signed you have and completed, everything would be green. the dark green at the bottom. if it's awaiting user acceptance test it's the lighter green and if it's in progress it's in the blue. ideally what you would have wanted to do was have the dark green slowly move up and identify all 25 of them, as all of them are properly closed down. the types of things that were

identified on the punch list include things like grandfathered fees, which is a funny name, a funny way of saying that you need to be able to utilize historical fee schedules when you are updating a project of very long duration. can you go back, if a project started 5 years ago, you may need to adjust it. can it properly look up and calculate the fees. there are other things, multi squad inspections, the ability to handle long duration inspections, permit suspensions are another one. we have a list of examples. these were chose lepb because they are kind of easy to understand. some of them are a lot more technical and arcane, but this is just an example. i'll give you some, a few specifics. there are a number

of issues, as you go through, you'll see there are a number of issues with the permit extension process. there are issues with the product not yet enforcing contractor license classifications, the wrong type of licensed contractor can apply for and get the wrong type of permit, that type of thing. the last one, 1294 on aca, which is the public access site, a registered contractor can look at documents that weren't his, for example, that's another example of something that is open. starting on september 21st, the excella platform was upgraded, it is much nicer than the old one, they are having some i object e -- issues with

the 8.0 rollout, at the moment we can't schedule any inspections using the citizen access portal, which is normal functionality. the main thick the 8.0 issues have done to us is it's made testing a lot more difficult for about the last month. any questions on the open issues? >> can i, i'm open to suggestion here. would we better getting through this, commissioner walker, then going back to the questions or do you want to do it as we go through it? i'm open but it seems more efficient if we got through it and then we can build. >> i'm fine. >> if there's no objection, if there's okay with fellow commissioners, then we can backtrack if that's okay. continue, sean, thank you. >> the gaps in functionality, this is kind of at the very heart of the matter. in the early stages of the project

and, you know, we could probably go into the details as to how and exactly why this happened, but at some point the business users, key business users throughout dbi were excluded from the requirements process. they did not sign off on the business requirements. the requirements were signed off by internal project team members and that's what was developed. so from the very outset that's the problem. the business would not sign off on the requirements. the requirements are basically your agreement on what you want to build. and due to whatever conflict was going on early in the project, the business refused to sign and internally to keep the project going forward internal project team members signed off on at least half of the requirements. and if you look at them you'll note that there are things missing from them

that are described in the defect list that i reviewed with you earlier. so over time of course the actual stake holders, the actual sme's throughout dbi have expressed frustration that they talked about these things and for whatever reason it was not captured as a requirement and not implemented in the product. so now, of course, we ask these same business users to test and get a license through and they can't do it. it doesn't capture the required information or some similar thing, some similar stop gap that prevents them from issuing the permit or scheduling the inspection properly, right? and that's how the business considers a defect, right? and that's a key distinction, i

think, needs to be made. defects versus scope changes, dbi considers it a defect when they can't execute a business process. they can't capture the proper information for a certain license, they can't schedule an inspection with the proper criteria, they can't do a specific type of inspection and so on and so forth. the fees are calculated incorrectly, that's also a problem. we have a lot of issues with fees. and another thing that happened and has been happening throughout the project is better work, 3 months ago, stopped work today for some reason. again we take the users in, we ask them to test and there are issues with these things that seem to be going back and forth. they work one day and they don't work the next. to be fair, there have been

scope changes, right? you know, a vendor trying to hit a target, trying to hit a date, needs certain stability in the requirements in order to be able to meet that date and there have been scope changes. there have been requirements, we admit, that were signed off and when it came time to test, changes needed to be made. some of that did occur, right? we freely admit that. not a huge amount by our estimation but it does happen, right? and of course i think you are all aware that there's an awful lot of legislation that gets enacted on a regular basis and by and large new legislation impacts the business process and the software changes. so no matter what we do we're trying to hit a moving target and the vendors are trying to hit a moving target. we did an analysis of a

ticket, this was an internal analysis by dbi, looking at items that are opened, and we only looked at the last 4 months, high 80's of the tickets had defects relating to things up above. 13 percent were new legislation or we did say, oops, that's a signed-off requirement and we admit that one's a change and that one is on us. the vendor, of course, based on what i had mentioned earlier about the requirements not being signed off and, to be fair to the vendor, you take a number of people in and you tell them what to code, what are they going to code to? what are they going to develop to? they have to code to what's written down and that's the requirement, right? so that's why there's such a wide disparity between what the vendor believes are the gaps

and what's new and what's out of scope and what's in scope and what the business believes what is in scope and what is out of scope. and the root of that issue goes all the way back to the beginning where the business would not sign off on the requirements and we had basically had key professionals signing off on the requirements which is not good practice. we have had issues with quality and turn around. we looked at the defects that were raised during the testing in august and about 18 percent, some were shy of 20, were things that went away and came back again, again frustrating for the testers, frustrating for the users but that's just something that's just a simple fact that occurred and further project history at this point. a number of things that once worked, failed and that was

pointed out and documented again in the latest round of testing, things like site permits and a number of different fecal klaitions. i remember commissioner mccray asked how long do these take to fix and 3 out of 10 took 6 months or longer. there's something wrong with the governance and the approach and what it takes to test, get a clean test, and resume the testing and have a reasonable expectation that the issues that were raised prior had been addressed. it kind of feels like whack a mole, to be

honest. people are working hard but sometimes there are inadvertant issues introduced elsewhere in the application. customer service, performance and stability is a concern. incident management and problem management, there we are talking specifically about we call and there's a problem with the environment, our reports aren't running, that type of thing, they simply are not addressed unless we escalate and that's a problem. so it's hard to, again, get a bunch of users in a room, you try to test and things freeze and hang, you call and you don't get a response. that's what we're referring to there. it has been difficult. i'm sure some of it is we're not quite in production status yet, but when we do raise issues and tickets we do want some response. they are good on the critical

1's, but severity, total, everything is down, they do follow-up on those and turn them around but it's everything else that is the problem. performance and stability, we did some -- because we did seem to have issues with the performance, with the environment slowing down or the environment not being available, and we were actually told a number of times by the vendor that there was our own internal network, the city of san francisco's network was the issue. so to eliminate that from consideration we used a third party site monitoring tool and that third party monitoring tool that's not hosted in excella, not hosted in the city, it's a vendor that monitors web sites and their performance and availability for you, that revealed certain instabilities. in a one-month period, i used a free trial, it

lasted one month, in a one-month period there are 3 episodes of down time to the environment. we're not used to things going down like that so stability is a concern. no proactive monitoring, i think i should clarify this. i'm sure the vendor makes sure their servers are up and certain processes are running and what not. i'm talking about the third party monitoring that measures true end to end, that measures what a user would see. somebody out there on the internet trying to access the web site, not somebody within your 4 walls trying to access the web site. if you really want to measure a user experience it's got to be done from a third party site. it can't be dbi, it can't be the vendor, it's got to be somewhere else and there are vendors that do that kind of service and it's my understanding, based on talking with internal people at excella, that they are starting

to pursue that themselves because it is just good practice to monitor from a third party neutral site. the best way to mimic an end user experience. and concerns with performance and stability aren't just us. we have had one other major jurisdiction contact us and say, are you having challenges with customer service, performance and stability and we said yes we did and we changed notes with them. so that is a concern as well. i know performance and stability are important to people. we figured we would share the information we had. that's it. any questions? >> thank you, sean. okay, commissioner walker and i know commissioner mar and then we'll take it from there with the other commissioners. >> thank you for this honest appraisal. i have to say just going from the start that i'm

pretty upset about this. i think everybody is aware of that. it would have been nice to have this type of information, especially about the first issue arose, that proper personnel were not in place, i think that we, every time we have seen this at this commission we have asked before even henry came aboard we sort of demanded to know, you know, that proper personnel were in place in this process to make sure our business practices and those whatever we call them, i can't remember what you called them, the things you aim at. >> experts, sme's. >> that they be attached to this. we went through this, this was maybe -- before a lot of you also were on the commission we went through a whole re-engineering of our processes to give those directives to this process.

and so at this point i am a little bit frustrated that we didn't have that in place and that is a large part of this problem and i believe it rests solely on us. i agree we need to have a third party assessment of our practices but i would prefer it if the bic would manage that, choose a vendor and get the report. because we need to also evaluate our department's responsibility in that. so there's a couple -- because i wrote things down. so i want to make sure of who the proper personnel is going forward of who should be at the table to input to our practices so that doesn't continue to be an issue. i kind of would like to know why we didn't have that in

place from the beginning. so when we talk about folks complaining about not being included, i want to know who they complained to and why it wasn't responded to. i would like to hear from the vendors who are here, thank you for coming, why there seems to be not enough personnel on this to respond to our needs. we have again every meeting that we've had discussion at i have demanded that we make sure that we have personnel both from our department and the vendors available. i get that we are, like, 4 years into a process that was expected to take a couple. >> yes. >> so i'm not surprised the budget is blown. i'm disturbed but not surprised. and so i think that, i mean for right now those are my issues. i

want to support taking a pause because i think we need to breathe and figure out where we're going. we need to make sure all the partners we're working with are working with us. it often feels like we're working against each other and i would really like it if that didn't happen. so that's all i have to say right now. >> commissioner mar. >> so, first of all, i want to thank both of you for this report. i know that in other meetings and past meetings, henry, you've been the target of a lot of my frustration. you've put a lot of work in to get to where we are now but i want to echo my past frustration and also some of the things commissioner walker has said today and also even what commissioner mccray asked about the last meeting about how long and how much. you guys are from the it experts

expertise from the city. and due to the fact that our it person left abruptly, but it's the same problem. and i feel like not having a business lead, not having somebody on the inspection side that's a lead, not just an inspector, housing side that's a lead, not just, you know, front line staff, that was the problem from the beginning. but it me it's not a new problem because i've been yelling about that for at least a year, maybe more, as long as i've been going to the meetings. so i don't want to direct this at director hui but that's what i've been yelling about. it's great to have great it people, two on loan from other parts of the city, we appreciate it. regardless of who -- but what we needed was somebody who could work with our inspection

staff, all the division, and said this is what we are going to do now. this is the transformation and i think part of the problem is that we weren't, we didn't just want to take the pts -- the old system and make it into excella, because part of the problem was maybe our old system wasn't that transparent to begin with and that's another one of the issues i was harping on. this is about permits so one of the biggest gripes of citizens in our city is how the hell do you get a permit among some people and then among other people is why the hell do those guys pull 100 permits easily? you know, because maybe it's not the same. so if you want to put something in a computer about how to pull a permit, well, for one guy it's

one way, for another guy it's another way. that's one of the things that from the business lead side they had to get that stuff together before you could give it to an it person and put this in a computer. so my complaint, and i don't want to compliment our sister department in planning a lot because i know they have their own issues, but one of the things, the reason they are up and running, i believe, is they had a business lead very early on. they had someone that was into plan checking, that was into the planners, and someone who was in management that could tell the planning staff, this is how we're going to do things now. maybe it's not that great and i think they still have a lot of issues, we have issues here too, but we needed that kind of leadership in our own department and we didn't get it. so before i go on, that's one

of the problems. and i agree with commissioner walker it's time for the bic to become involved. this is what i feel bad about. i'm kind of pissed about the way this was thrown before us because i asked for very specific things before we put this on the agenda. i asked for this report to go out in our friday packets, we get our packets on friday. okay, i asked for the original contract that we had with step 21. this was a contract, some of it was signed in 2011, so i know sometimes we ask staff to do hard stuff, give me something on friday we're going to talk about wednesday. but this is not new, this is a contract that came out in 2011. this was a xerox job that somebody stuffed into our packet on friday. i can't read 65 pages 5 minutes before the meeting. i want to see the original weaknesses, if it was weaknesses on the vendor's

part, i want to be able to understand that. if it was weaknesses in our part, i want to be able to understand that. so my thing is don't come to the bic and ask us to make a decision and you don't give us information. >> you can continue, but i just want to say we were gathering information. there was legal issues that had to be talked, the secretary was given stuff that had to go out but the packages have to go out so we're all trying to make the right decision so we can have this hearing. to your point, though, we have the information. we're probably missing some information but we'll get that information and we'll get to the bottom of it. are you finished? >> for now. >> thank you. to the staff, i think the important thing here this morning, i see there's the vendors are here, and i don't want to dismiss that that was then, this is now. what are we

going to do going forward? that's what i want the focus to be going forward. commissioner mar's point, we acknowledge them, we get them, but what's the next actions? how do we get to where we can have our system up and running. i'd like to kind of focus on that now going forward. commissioners, are there any more --. >> i'd like to hear from the vendors. >> i want to wrap up this segment here with the other commissioners, if there's any other commissioners, and then go on to the vendors going forward. commissioner lee, you are good? commissioner mccray, are you going to, do you have a question before i ask these guys to sit down? >> no. >> one point i wanted to respond to, a question about commissioner walker and commissioner mar brought up about the business lead. what i can unequivocally state is when i arrived on the project in september of 2014, the second week i was on the

project dbi issued a memo appointing ron tom as the business lead. so since that time i have had full unfettered access to ron tom. he, of course, knows nearly every function within the building very well, he has access to every person that he needs, and has been instrumental in making sure we have the right people in the room. in addition that memo outlined every single division within dbi who the lead and who the back-up was for every business function. and those have been in place again since the second week of september, 2014. i can't speak to what was in place prior to that, but i know from my involvement in the project we have had that business lead role filled. >> and yet we are here. >> we are here. and there was a lot of items there that unfortunately we had to get to this point to understand that it wasn't done and so on. i think we're all acknowledging

and facing our demons here and that's the whole idea of this hearing so we can plot our next step. commissioners, if there's no more questions for staff, thank you, henry, thank you, sean, thank you for that presentation this morning. madam secretary, what's the next protocol here? you want to call --. >> if they would like to call forward. >> two vendors, excella and 21. >> it's three minutes. however, i'm sure if you need some more time we'll ask you a question and we can go over. >> it's not three minutes, it's a presentation. >> it's a presentation. >> i would like --. >> so you have up to, how long does a presentation take, 10 minutes? >> it doesn't matter. >> there's a lot to be talked here. >> i do want to respond to some of the things we've heard some far this morning. >> absolutely. so you can make your presentation and then there will be, if there's other members there, is it up to --.

>> this is not a hearing per se so we don't have a time limit. >> perfect, so you are good. please state your name for the record, please. >> linda short, vice president of professional services at 21 tech. thank you for having me this morning. i think a couple of the things there have come up this morning so far that i would like to speak to is your question about how did we get here having this meeting right now today. and i believe part of that is that the project team, the people on the ground working every day hard to pull this together, and the vendor team and the dbi team do work really well together but we have always felt like we are just so close to the finish line. so in february there were meetings where the punch list items came out. this is a functionality that dbi needs to go live. so we felt, had that directive, that when we completed these

punch list items, that we would be in a position to go live. so we felt like we were, have been making incredible progress towards those pretty big piece functionality tickets. as part of that when we did deliver them there were additional requirements that came out of the end users actually seeing what was delivered, which can be typical. sometimes you don't know exactly what you want until you lay your eyes on it and have your fingers on the keyboard, but that is part of -- and effects a delay in a project like this. another thing i wanted to talk about was defects and the number of defects reported here today. there is a difference of opinion on the definition of a defect. i understand that from a user's point of view a defect is something they feel like they cannot move forward with their daily work, but from a project team's point of view, a defect is a negative connotation on the quality of

our work. so i do want to qualify that there are defects, there are bugs, but in oug analysis it's about reversed, it's about 20 percent bugs with our work and 80 percent are additional things that we had not heard in the past. so as we go through and the users are spending much more time with their hands on the system this last summer than they have previously, they are getting more and more familiar with excella and they are starting to look beyond that base functionality and into how they are going to handle exceptions to their normal processes. and i believe a lot of what we're seeing come out now are exceptions to their normal processes that the configuration team has been looking into. i just wanted to clarify those couple things and answer your questions. >> commissioner walkers has some questions for you. >> to this point of defects,

exceptions, the list that was included in the presentation from the staff don't seem like exceptions, things like needing to put the inspector's name or the plan checker's name in, those things are, like, pretty routine. in fact, all of the things listed are pretty routine. >> there are a couple i can speak to directly. the last one about the reporting and a contractor being able to print any permit, that was a known limitation to basically putting the print button out there on aca, so we let it be known if we put this out there, that's a limitation that is beyond our ability to control. so it was requested anyway, we put it there with that limitation and now that limitation pops up as a big. so that's one that i can speak to specifically. but you're right, this is a cross-section of that 108.

>> so do you feel that you are properly staffed? >> yes. so we have two excellent excella resources, they are very familiar with dbi's implementation, we just added a third based on some earlier meetings, steering committee meets, so we did add a third resource with 9 to 10 years of excella experience so they are now waiting for project restart and will look for other things to keep them busy. but, yes -- and we do have also access to excella resources when we need those. >> i ask that question because when we have been briefed on this there are, like, 6 months time periods before things get fixed and then when things get fixed it -- so it feels to me like there's not people on the ground with us as we're doing this.

>> okay. so when you look at that statistic, the 6 months, 12 months, i would like to take some time and come back to you with more information on that. but what i have seen in this project is that a bug is logged in the uat tracker where we keep that. or it's not just one, it's 8 or 10 or 12, all in one item. so we fix 8 of them, say, four of them we say this is technically impossible and so it looks like it's open for a long time. or we fix two or three and while they're testing the two or three they find more things and it looks like the same issue number so it looks like it's open a long time. that is something about a year, 14 months ago we tried to address, we can't look at the statistics of our team and say what quality of work they are

doing when we have this perpetual logging going in on one item and we tried to address that and the entire team got better at handling that. i would have to see where these statistics are to be able to answer that. >> what is your assessment, i mean have you experienced issues with new people coming in and giving you sort of new scope? i mean that's what we're talking about, the key users, why weren't the key users identified and brought in earlier on? >> right. so i don't know the answer to that, it's only hearsay, but i know that or i've heard that when the project started, vivian wanted to control that and that was kind of our first implementation and she did not control the end users, probably because she was trying to streamline the processes. i don't know the history there.

i don't know what happened when hemma came on board, why hemma was the wall between us and the end users. when hemma left and henry came on board those end users were starting to get more and more involved in the project and that really has been great, but it was only a year ago. so i think they're busy like we're all busy so they are not all day looking at excella and working through their processes and trying to understand how what they do today translates into that. so when they spend more and more time, i believe they see more and more things. oh my gosh, for me to sit down with a line of 20 people waiting for me to process their permit, i need to feel really confident that i can do it. so i totally understand their concern. i do have a sense that we are

probably trying to configure to too many exceptions to the rule but that's not our call, that's the business call to say this is a sub 1, this is a sub 2, we have to have it to do our job. as a consultant it's not our place to go in and say, no, no, no. i don't feel that. they are the ones on the ground having to deal with the public and trying to process them through so you are not hearing about it later so i understand their concern. the project team i think we feel like every time they look at the system they do see new things where they want it a little quicker, a little cleaner, they don't -- they want a little bit more and the more they understand how flexibility excella is, i think the more they want. so it's difficult, it's been difficult for the project team to draw that box around this is what we need to go live and we can add some of these other things later because we're not, i'm not the one on the ground, i'm

not the one by the keyboard with 20 people in line. but someone needs to be that person. >> uh-huh. >> commissioner mar's question, please. >> in my mind business lead, and thank henry for putting ron tom on the spot, but when we assigned him as the business lead or director hui assigned him as the business lead, it was my understanding it was his job to be much more involved with excella. not every inspector is on there every day, neither are the clerks. and if there are problems within the division, the channel was him. that's the purpose of the business lead. so it was not up to the vendor to deal with questions from every division or every inspector but one of our senior people, which i

believe was deputy ron tom who was that kind of conduit that hemma could not do, even though she was assigned, she couldn't do it because she was an it person and ron is not. he comes out of that side of the house. so that's what my concern is. did that improve? because he was somebody that the vendor could have gone to every day, in my book, not just henry or sean, but ron, and said if your guys have these complaints which one is a category 1 versus a category 3? the other thing is, he should have enough knowledge of what is the requirements for excella. that was the other thing, there was -- we have to come up with what are the requirements, you know, before the vendor could do it. so is that clear to the vendor now, what are the requirements of

the performance, what is he supposed to do so it's not just constantly additions or change orders? we're not building a house as we go, we're supposed to have plans. that was the other analogy. >> would you agree that's why we need -- to build that, that framework. >> you have a blueprint. >> ideally yes. so we have that pause, we get really clear vision and direction, everybody knows where we're going, we stay within that scope. >> write the rules then stick by them. >> we would love that, yes. >> i think that would be healthy. if there's no more questions? next speaker, please. >> hello, i'm one of the partners at 21 tech. linda was the lead project manager and i really appreciate everything she very candidly spoke to all of you. i just want to add a couple of points to that, a couple of suggestions. and i think she talked about the

history that we had one set of requirements when miss day was the director and then there was another set of requirements, that was put on hold and another set of requirements when hemma came on board and then that was put on -- that we were coding to but they didn't quite like when they were testing and there was a third set of requirements so that punch list, 25 items that came up which we got with the business users, and that was very detailed with the business users. my concern and my suggestion is going forward when there's uat, when there's testing going on, that the testing actually goes with the requirement and says is this requirement being met? yes or no. and then that's the way you put a box around it. but if you are testing just generally and say, oh, i don't like the way this button drops down, i'd rather it be a touch button rather than drop down, i'm being facetious but if there's no requirement i feel that whack a mole is going to keep going on.

we're never going to get a boundary put around. that's typically best practices of how we do uat a second point i think linda and sean and henry talked about, from a technical perspective we feel we have a very strong team that's addressing every technical issue that's come up. the issue we're having is a defect is, from the business side, a defect is something they would like to have, not whether this meeting the requirement or not. so what we consider a detect is drastickally different from what's considered a defect here. until we align that, let's define if we have a work around then it's not a severity 1 or a severity 2. it doesn't have to be exactly the system you have today. and our concern is sometimes end users are so aware of what they do today, they want to replicate 15 years of what they have

today. and excella is built with a different perspective and we'd love it if the business could actually get, really understand the excella process so they understand what the differences are and then own that. just wanted to add that. >> thank you so much. >> and one last point is our team, we've added several members of our team and we thought we were going to go live. what linda didn't address that we also have an excella teamworking with us. our entire team is pretty significant, we have 7 to 8 or 9 people working on this, the excella portion is these 3 members we were working with. >> thank you for your time. next speaker, please. >> hi, i'm maury blankman, ceo of excella. i don't know if you remember me, commissioner, but we were only two people in the room dating back from when

this project started and i came up to start about the frustration the commission had that they had planned this project for 5 years and that it was going to take two years to implement it. i say that somewhat sarcastickally but i want each and every one of you to know as the ceo of this company, we have 700 employees, we have 2200 government agencies that we work with, this is my city and i am 100 percent behind getting this thing live regardless of what it takes on our part. i participated in a meeting back in february with president mack car mccarthy and other directors and volunteered up free resources from our company to make sure this project took live, to take people out of the field and put them behind the doors here without getting paid for it just to make sure that what we were doing as a vendor

what we could do to get this project live. i share your frustration, director, when i came to this meeting it was the first time i saw a lot of this. i want nothing more than what you guys want. again, this is my home town and i love it here and i want everything to be transparent, aboveboard, open, everything that we stand for in this great city. a year after i met with you we signed a contract with the city of oakland. they are actually live now using this. so, you know, we have city of sacramento, sacramento county, pala alto, oakland, contra costa county, they are all our users. if there's any doubt that it does work, it does. and when i go through this list of open examples, open issues, you know -- and i'm not here to argue against a pause. but what in my experience in working with many, many large

size accounts that encounter issues like this, you know what i would like to see is you heard from 21 tech and they are our prime vendor on this. this isn't the first project we worked on to the. i think it was 7 years ago we brought up the san francisco port as a team and they built expertise and helped work with us to bring up salt like city live on this project and it's been running for 5 years and they have a fantastic implementation as well. salt like city went through a similar stage to what we had here but they had very strong leadership that basically said, okay, we're going live on this, let's put a stake on the ground, let's make it happen. i think as relates to the pause what i would suggest if there's 200 open issues and these are, you know, 21 tech and excella think that 87 percent of them are new requirements, the agency thinks that 13 percent of them are

defects, it's reversed. we believe that 87 percent are new requirements, 13 percent are defects, they are the reverse, let's sit down and talk about it amongst ourselves and come up with a meaningful list. because when i look through here and i see things like mol inspector app does not require an inspector to comment when inspection is resulted. i've been standing in front of people before and they said your inspection results are too complicated, i just want result approved. i don't want to have to put a comment. speed is important to me. i think these things need to be discussed in an open forum and there definitely does need to be someone who is willing to stand up and say, well, speed is important and we don't need a comment if one is not necessary. but if we do, well, sure, let's address that and

move forward. but that's what i would like to see happen as a next step. and i do applaud the statement that the bic would like to get more involved because i think any time there's oversight in a project like this, you know, great things happen. and the final thing that i heard from the team that has been somewhat of a discussion amongst our group is that we don't believe that we'll run out of funding for this project. i mean we believe the funds are in place, we can make this happen. you know, i guess it's somewhat, you know, of -- against what i -- maybe i should want more money. but i really am just saying that i think the budget that we have we can make it happen. and one of the things that's very important to excella is when we these projects in that contract, even though it was 4 years ago, we have a reputation

in place and we want to stand up here and say, you know what? we may not have been on time or under planned hours but we still did it on budget. and, you know, that's our goal. thank you. >> thank you. >> i am -- commissioner melgar, please. >> i just had a question for director hui. why do you believe you need a pause? >> why i need to have the pause, after the end to end testing with 200 items and then from my information from henry and sean and the consultants say they will run out of money, you know, even with that, and

then we were pretty sure we will be over. also we don't know how much more money, that's what is different song from previous speaker. and also to talk with, you know, department of technology, you know, with city administrator and to move forward we want to make sure, you know, for our road map to see how to proceed. for some of you now is good now you talk about the scope change or not a scope change. for example, i remember commissioner mar also attend a meeting for one of the meeting regarding what we call grandfather fee. always in san francisco in the building code, it's not the process or

anything, we cannot deviate from the building code. for our city and county of san francisco, permit issue is based on the fee on the day of file. it's not only our department, all department, including planning, fire, puc and everyone. and they told me, oh, you can do it by hand, go around by hand with my staff to calculate it. that means we cannot issue any permit because from their standpoint is only one or two permit. but there's 14,000 permit on hand in the pay line. this is just one example, there is some other stuff. how to get the scope if we have, these jobs start from the beginning, we should have the

scope well defined. suppose we, every meeting i tell the consultant they are the expert, they should come in to see what we need. certain thing we want to streamline to do a better job, but certain things we need to stand by the code. we cannot just, oh, that's all you can do. initially the consultant tell me, oh, we cannot change the fees, only one fee. but in our case we cannot. that's why i want to pause it and then see how we move forward because pretty soon we run out of money per my staff. >> can i just -- one clarification. how long a pause do you think you need? >> right now we, you know, have department of technology help me to find independent, no conflict with our vendor 21 tech and et cetera and then

hopefully by this friday can identify that particular consultant and inform you who is it right away, who is the consultant. >> but how long? >> that's why we have the scope and then we will define. right now i don't know. probably henry, do you have any idea? >> yeah, could i have -- i've got to -- i don't want to go to commissioner walker right after me here, but ron tom, could you come up a sec and tom just for -- i want to frame something here and then commissioner walker can have her comment. it's kind of hitchhiking off commissioner melgar here and i don't know which one can answer. so listening to where the fellow commissioners are,

including myself, we're kind of rewriting the script so we can have some construction format going forward. the word pause, even in my industry, is a very delicate word right now. it's used a lot in development, how to stop development for a while, pause. >> moratorium. >> yeah, i get the word. as a commissioner we need to define what that pause is to commissioner melgar, is it two months, three months, i know you don't have the answers route now but i want to frame it up, is it two months, three months, four months, that is something that's going to be very important for us as a commission to understand. the big thing is the commission oversight. to me, i think we do need a commission oversight so whatever format is come up with that commission oversight whether it's an ad hoc committee or whatever i think would support mostly whatever, who sits on that, give it some thought and what would their job description be

as an oversight committee to help you guys, to everybody i think would be very important. you know, the teams, i'm pretty confident based on the testimony today that we have enough people now, we have the right people in place to kind of bring this on home. so i mean obviously the personnel that's involved it looks like we're going to be having this same personnel bring this on home because it's in the best interests of everybody. so the consultant who we get i guess is probably going to come back to us with a report, right? and in that report is going to answer a lot of these questions but i think it's important that it's framed in this context, time frame and so on, oversight committee and when the real legitimate go live date that we can dig our teeth into. commissioner melgar? >> i just need a clarification

because i'm not sure what you mean when you say, we need a pause. because having been in these kinds of projects before if we say, okay, we're going to have a pause that means that the vendor's not involved, not incurring costs? because if that's the case then that really worries me because i feel like those guys need to be engaged. if they get reassigned, the company is still going to employ their people and they're going to be paying them. they're going to be working on something else. by the time 4 or 5 months, we get our act together and hire them back again to be on this job there's a lot that's lost. so i want you to define what you mean by a pause, please. >> commissioner walker, i don't think we can answer that question now. do you think? i don't. can that question be answered right now? it can. go ahead, commissioner henry, sorry.

>> what we mean by pause, i think i spoke to but probably too briefly, is with the situation where we know that we don't have budget and this was news communicated to us by our partners that with the given amount of items that we have to fix and the punch list items and knowing we have further rounds of testing that will bring up more rounds of items to be addressed we were running to risk to not have any budget left to get all the way to go live. given that, what pause means is to stop and stop creating more costs is not enough and during that pause to go ahead and perform the assessment, get a clear path, a clear plan to get us to go live and then start things back up. you are exactly correct that we do run the resource risk that the consultant partner resources could get deployed to other projects and may not be

available when we restart. but that is a risk that we run. >> okay, that's a good answer, thank you, commissioner walker and then commissioner mar. >> so i don't support a pause. it's to the same point as commissioner melgar. not to say i don't think internally at dbi to get our own house in order. i think a lot of this is because we didn't have the right personnel from our department from the beginning and that has been the case for 4 years. now we have it, we have identified the fact that we should have done what we did sooner and i think that we need to sort of chiu gum and walk at the same time, that we need to actually take the information that we have and continue engaging our vendors in helping find the solution forwards. you know, i will use an analogy

that you can't fix a broken tool with a broken tool. we need help from our vendors who are creating this but we need to really, like, have leadership which commissioner mar has been saying for 3 years, determining which of these things, gosh, it would be better if we could do it with the left hand than the right hand because new people are using the system. we have, i think, a failure to interpret our extensive permitting reformating process into this system and not having the key people. so we need to do that regardless of a pause or not and we should have been doing it for the last year. having said that, i don't want to lose our vendors and i want

our vendors, some of whom have said they are not going to go beyond the budget so we now have a different statement from one of our vendors, we need to engage them in helping us fix our problem. i also support a third party coming in and reporting to us what in the heck happened. and, you know, if you need a pause maybe a week pause or a month pause but i have no patience with this, we went through the same thing with our pneumatic which was intended to help our process and increase transparency and got, pardon my french, shit canned the department. so we now have the same issues coming up about favoritism so this is not going to happen with this. i am going to be here on this commission until this system happens and if it takes 20 years, i will be here in 20

years. promises. >> 15 years in the making, right? >> it's already been 15 years since we tried to do this and three different rfp's have not given us a new permitting system. so if you think i'm frustrated, i am. so i'm not going to support another pause, i will support a third party looking at what occurred. >> commissioner mar. >> i'm not very sympathetic to a pause either but i'm not going to make the same threat commissioner walker made because i hope not to be here in 15 years. here's the problem with the pause. it's related to what commissioner melgar said, how much time and also to me the most important thing, what do you do during the pause to do with the problem? it's the same way when we have abatement appeals, if someone says hold off on my nov, we need more time, okay, what are you going to do? 30

days, 60 days, what are you going to do in those 30 days or 60 days? we'll think about it. but you guys and the staff, you guys -- director hui, you are not giving us that. you are not telling us -- here's the thing about the consultant, i'm also concerned. hiring a consultant, more money, it is not the weak link here. sean, henry, you guys have been great. the weak link has been the business side. so this is where i feel like the commission has to become more involved because, yes, we could hire another it consultant to do something you guys probably are just as capable of doing. what effect will they have on the business side? what effect will they have on transmiting to the division this is the most important thing and this is what we want to do now and get

the divisions on board. you know, i don't see that plan. and so, yes, it's only been a year, sorry, ron, it's only been a year since you were given this thankless job, but it's still a year. it's still a year. to me if we were fixing it a year is a lot of time. so to me adding another it person doesn't fix the problem. >> well, i guess what the question is we're asking the experts. you've given us concerns that you have. we're not ready to go live and i don't think anything is going to change that dialogue here this morning and i do understand the frustrations, we are all frustrated about -- so what i'm trying to do is frame so the commission knows next steps here. and anybody that can frame it based on what's happened here in the discussion i would greatly appreciate it here this morning. ron? >> commissioners, good morning, ron tom, assistant

director. our staff has not stopped being engaged. in fact, i'm part cheer leader and part assistant director. i keep getting people to realize that without their participation, regardless of how we handle it on the periphery of this internally they have to stay engaged. so they have to -- and i participate in those attendance testing and review of current and past tests, part of them for uat, but some of them are brought forward from uat, results and fixes that were, fixes that were documented for us to test. so i just want to say that i'm representing our staff, we have

not stopped being both engaged and even though it sometimes is a level of enthusiasm that may not be where we all would like it to be, it's part of the long-term frustration that everybody has pretty much expressed here. so our staff do continue to, they do take it upon themselves -- like for instance the fifth floor. it's a very important floor for all of us on a daily basis because we turn out so many permits and we process them and collect the fees for them and issue them so people can work. susan buffka, to her credit, continually almost every day brings in two to three staff to go through the training process that will take away a level of trepidation when we go live. so she's a very good example of

staff that we don't ask her, i don't need to prompt her, she does it. i show up in the training room and there she is with staff. so we do want to go live. there is no doubt about it. we have, everybody has invested so much time and effort and just, it's like anything that we want to have success at, there are the difficulties that we face and the challenges that come about and probably, in all frankness, and i think it is true, we have had lack of continuity over the course of the beginning of this project to the current time. certainly in the last year we have not had that lack of continuity. that's why we can see a list that manifests the issues that are brought up -- and by the way, i sdwruft -- just want to

make sure that the commission is clear. issues that have to do with it would be better if the left hand did the thing than the right hand, in other words it would be better if it could do this or that, we cut that off. we cut that off early and advised the staff we can do those kind of improvements in the next phase. we can look at them and assess them. but certainly in the go live phase we want to only implement core functions and we know what those are, from the permitting side to the inspection side. the inspection side is a great deal of complexity because of the three different divisions that we have for the plumbing and electrical and building. and i don't know about other jurisdictions, i suspect other jurisdictions don't have the same complexity we have. because of volume of work, the type of work, the scope of the work and the fact that we have 3 different inspection divisions all having to coordinate on a sunk he will

project at any given time. so those are complexities that maybe the program didn't face before but they are facing them now. so i know we've spent a lot of time on the inspection side trying to figure out basic functions like having a multiple floors on a high rise, the ability to inspect those floors at any given time, any given day. i hope the message at least from my perspective is clear. the staff have not stopped working on this. they are asked to continue to work on it and we will keep looking at anything that's been passed forward to us that says it's been fixed and we will test it to see if it was. open to any other questions. >> commissioner walker, please. >> do you feel confident that our set of requirements for this project is in place? because we've heard a lot about shifting definitions of that both from our it and from the vendors. do you feel confident

that bee now have our requirements? >> commissioner walker, i am. and how do i arrive at that? because i sat together with henry and with sean and we've gone through the lists of some 200 items, make sure are they truly core items that we have to have fixed? they are part of our current system. we're not asking to embellish our system, we're saying this is what we do now. we schedule multiple inspections on a high rise in the morning for the inspector to hit various floors. every floor has maybe a little different scope of work. but we're able to do that. now, current pts, we need to replicate that in the ppts. i'm just using that as a very simplified example, but we've gone through and asked our staff is this a core function? do you have it today and is it critical to your operations tomorrow? don't tell us we would like that, it would be

better. no, we don't want to listen to this. it has to be the second phase. >> so, that being said, it sounds to me like the issue around the pause --. >> ma'am, clarification. what ron is referring to is as these defects are logged we are reviewing those, the defects. we have not gone through an exhaustive look at the old requirements. the requirements have not been reviewed and i believe they are still at the heart of the issue. >> so it's verifying what our requirements are to the vendor and then as a shoot off of that, it's then negotiating between the vendor and us as to what was part of the original scope and what is new, and that is the part that the third party could come in and help us with, is the negotiation. so it sounds to me like we have a need to get our own house in order as we got forward with our requirements, get clear on those. and that's

the pause that we're talking about. the negotiation about money can happen at the same time as we're working, personally. >> maybe we don't need more money. >> maybe we don't need, maybe we do. but the part about our requirements i think requires our vendors to be part of the conversation. so i just, i would agree with commissioner melgar that i'm not sure that a pause is what we're looking at rather than a moment of clarity between us and our vendors and our own department, and get clear with what it is we're doing and what it is we want to do about our requirements. that's the key thing that i am sure all of my commissioners here --. >> we all agree. >> all agree about. >> we'll call it a clarity pause, how about that? >> consciousness raising.

>> commissioner mccray. >> as i look, i have to go to page 8 of this presentation. i hear the requirements, of those requirements to be shaped more heavily by the business side, more input from the it side, i understand that. i also understand issues of continuity and so forth over the life of the project. what's troubling to me is that no one is speaking to this quality issue, that even when we identify the requirements, even when we're clear about what it is we want, next week it breaks down. that has got to be looked at in this phase. have we got the requirements lot, if we have the balance between it and business and the product breaks down next week. >> thank you. so if i may,

then, commissioners, in closing, and i know there's some public comment on this, i don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add there on this. but this is not, we're not voting on this, this is kind of an informational session. >> possible action. >> it's not possible action. >> that's the old package. >> i think as the president you have a lot of --. >> we changed that. no, we're just arguing -- it was written originally and then we changed that. >> why did we do that? >> maybe the city attorney would like to do that? >> without notice? i got this last week. >> no, this is how it went out originally. >> can we just change that without noticing it? >> change what? >> that there's possible action. >> no, we have to notice that there's action. but we've

weighed in and we can ask to be part of it. >> okay, the city attorney was just going to say some words there. >> john almer from the city attorney's office. where this stands in terms of implementation of a contract is an administrative matter, so the building inspection commission has, well, they are a policy body and can provide direction, they have no direct input into changing the department's practices. so i think the discussion is very good to give staff a direction but in terms of taking action it's not on the agenda and there would be sort of limited things that would be appropriate for commission action. >> i just want a clarification. i remember when we originally put this together i had it down as an action item then i was told that we

couldn't act on this. >> the city attorney told me this was not an action item. >> first i thought it was an action item and i was given direction by the city attorney i could not make this an action item. commissioner walker. >> the president of the commission has the ability to request outside investigation. i did it for, from the controller's office, we could request the controller review our process and i think that they assign staff and did the necessary things they needed to do to hire people to do, you know, the professional people, specifically around this issue of identifying responsibility, if we need to, for going forward on the financial part. so i think that as a president you can do that. and i would actually hope that you would because i do thing that at this point there needs to be

somebody sort of not involved in any of the decisions at this point to make sure that it's happening and where we're, where we're sort of hitting the bumps. i think it's, you know, it's laudable, i don't want to sound like i don't appreciate the hard work of the it folks and ron in coming forward and doing this, but i want to make sure we don't continue doing it. so i would encourage the president to do that. that's just me. >> okay, duly noted. thank you, commissioner walker. please. >> so --. >> mr. mar, please. >> my feeling about where we move from here is also on the point of greater bic involvement. i know -- thank you for the clarification, city attorney almer, about involvement, but i feel like we've been too uninvolved in this process. so i feel like even on the discussions about

if we do get outside consultant i would like the bic to be involved in that. in terms of what we expect that consultant to do, something like that, you know, or even on the business practices, the business requirement, i also wanted to point out, i wanted to thank mr. statler for putting together this draft that i gave every commissioner here. but what some of the problems are, the bic hasn't been, even on a policy level, hasn't been involved enough in this stuff. i feel like we should be involved even on some of the business practices. working with ron, getting feedback from the staff about what is drop dead necessity versus what is a desirable. you know, stuff like that. we should know that because that's why we're on the commission. things like that i feel we should be more involved in it. otherwise -- and i feel like the last thing i would like to say about whatever they

call this thing, pause or consciousness raising session, is that if the staff is going to keep working on it, which from ron's report it seems like we're going to keep working on this. and we hope that the vendors will still stay engaged, then i don't understand, other than the money situation, what the pause is about. >> commissioner walker, please. >> just one more thing. i appreciate our city attorney advisement. this commission was put on very specifically by a vote of the people. it was on the ballot and it was voted for by the people and the language in the ballot measure included management of the department to not incur problems with the brown act and the sunshine act i think there's, you know, been determinations by the city attorney about how much we can get involved but ultimately i think this commission, probably more than any other commission,

does have a responsibility to the voters, to the citizens of san francisco, because they put it on the ballot. so i would check into that. >> i will. and i will give it some thought, sit down with the city attorney's office and check into what are our options here, if we have to have a special commission meeting on this we could do that and just really spend our time and our focus on that. i think what i'm hearing from every commissioner here is how long is it going to take us to put this together so we can get to the bottom of this. we certainly don't want to turn this into -- and i'm cognizant of the fact, whoever is selected of this, it has to be somebody that has to be on a list that the city can go straight to. otherwise we have to go through this city-wide scenario and i know commissioner mar may want to weigh on that. how fast we can put together a very constructive road map here as next step and i'd be willing to

sit down with the director and sit down with the city attorney and see exactly what the options open here so we can come right back to the commission and take it from there. commissioner melgar, please. >> one last thing. i will defer from my fellow commissioners that i actually haven't heard anything that convinces me that we need a third party, you know, entity. i really haven't. so i think that bringing in yet another set of folks who need to be brought up to speed and understand the minutia of what we need to delay this process even more. i'm just putting it out there, i just really don't see the need for it. what i do see the need for is for folks to just, you know, keep through -- i am actually very convinced kupb byron by

ron tom. you've only been at it a year and you need to keep going. i think there is a possibility that we're going to need more resources and i'm actually pretty comfortable with that. i think weighing the risks versus the investment, bringing us up to 21st century technology, it's a risk we have to take. sorry, guys, i don't think we should be either pausing nor bringing in a third party, i think we need to keep going. i am swayed also by the consultants who have advised us to be a little tighter on our testing systems to make sure that people who are testing different components, put a box around it, does this meet the requirements, yes/no, i mean i do think that we could get tighter on the management of the testing of the project.

but we should just do it, you know? >> i think we've got a very clear road map. i think next steps is i will sit down with the director and with you, deputy director, or deputy, and we have to come up with a game plan here. and if we can get this done without getting somebody in, so be it, at least we could evaluate where we stand with everything and we should probably do that right immediately. >> is this coming back to us next month? >> i don't think we can wait until next month. we want to keep moving forward here. >> if you need our input then call another meeting. >> i can call another meeting. i'd like to see what would come from that meeting. >> maybe commissioner mar could sit in with you. >> i'd like to involve the commissioners where i can without breaking the sunshine,

so i will try and do that, particularly the commissioners who, the questions they have asked and if it pertains to that i will get back to those individual commissioners and come up with a game plan within the next week or so of next step on this, if that is acceptable to everybody on the commission and the dretor, if you'd like to weigh in on that next step policy. not policy but next step. >> yeah, we can have a meeting together and then of course we will hear from the consultants, they were willing to do the -- retain the budget but i hear a different story. you can say anything but are they going to commit? that's why, you know, the scope, you know, what is the scope, that's why we want well defined this time. >> okay, all right. thank you for a very healthy conversation that needed to happen and thank you all for putting all your information together on both

sides. thank you to the vendors for coming here this evening. obviously thank you for coming here and i think it's very important, please step to the mic and your name, please, then we'll go to public comment on this. >> thank you for allowing me to come up again. i just wanted to make one thing clear. this is a fixed project. so if there are bugs to be fibsed, that's on our dime. the longer it takes, the more it costs us, but that's our commitment. the only issue here for us which was stated by dbi very eloquently, what is the delta of the requirements? what is the requirements they have that we don't have? this is the only issue. so if that pause or this effort, that's how we come up with what the delta is, that's all we need to finish our work. and if we have a significant pause we will lose our team who have done a lot of very custom code on your solution and

that's going to create a domino effect of issues that we haven't addressed. that's our concern over there. >> commissioner walker, please. >> yes, i think it's clear that there's a differing opinion about what should have been included already and what isn't. that part we'll work out. >> right. >> i mean, i've always said that. those are issues that should not be stopping this. our department has to commit to having a set of things and not continuing to create a moving target. so that's hopefully what we're going to do. i mean it sounds like everybody's in agreement on that. >> i think we'll be talking a lot in the next week or so. thank you so much. >> thank you for coming. >> maury, are you okay? >> maury blackman, ceo of excella. i agree with what was said. i feel like if we sit down with the department, i'm

willing to get involved. i mean, you know, i'm willing to, my office is just right around the corner. i'm willing to sit down myself and get involved and get us a pathway so that we can all be successful because we all want the same things here and that's the things that we've all stated going back to 2011. thank you. >> thank you. >> is there public comment on item 4? >> yes, my name is jerry dratler, i served on the 2012-2013 civil grand jury and we wrote a report on dbi and we observed excella. i think the problem here is a lack of clarity. so i think it would be helpful if the bic would separate high level it project management from tactical activities. so the high level problems we have

here are lack of a business requirements document and when you look at it historically, what's really interesting about that, again , when i was on the civil grand jury it was clear that the goal was to initially replicate the existing dbi system functionality on a new platform z. so to me it's sort of like you have two parcels of land, you have a house on one that's old, in need of repair, and the other is bare. and someone says republic mri kailt that house on the adjacent parcel and that's what we tried to do. that's what i believe dbi tried to do. and it's also in the executive update on page be 7, quote, all process flows were migrated as is.

so we have two things, we should push aside for a second is the system up or down and what's the defect, et cetera, and look at we don't have a requirements document. and what is a requirements document? it's a statement as to what the system should do rather than what -- how it does it and how it does it is the business processes. we don't have complete business processes. and how can i say that? because we just heard the vendors say we have enough money. dbi says we don't have enough money. we're close to implementing it, we're not close to implementing it. why does that disagreement exist? because there is not complete documentation. so my suggestion is that you reset,

where you reset and you get a business process requirements and you get business process -- excuse me -- you get requirements document and you get business processes and then you have an intelligent conversation about where we are. but you can't do it without those things. and we're just wasting time trying to do that. look, we've gone through 7 contract amendments, it's about time we do it. thank you. >> thank you. good comments. >> is there further public comment? seeing none, item 5, discussion and possible action regarding ordinance board of supervisors file number 150587, amending the building of planning code to require written and posted notice occupants of a building in which the demolition or merger of a building is proposed, requiring notice when kitchens

or bathrooms may be moved in addition to other requirements or regulations. >> good morning, commissioners, andre' power here with supervisor (inaudible)'s office. good luck on othello, by the way. so we were here, the supervisor was here a few months ago. the item is now back as an action item. i will briefly go through it one more time. we believe in tenants living in legal units and tenants living in unwarranted units should be treated fairly and he can quatablely particularly when it comes to their ability to stay in their homes. we were surprised to find written into our codes that we specifically treat tenants living in legal and unwarranted units differently. tenants living in legal units get legal notice. but if an unwarranted

unit is scheduled to be demolished often they get no notice. sometimes that mean their knowledge to be evicted means when the contractors arrive in the morning to remove their unit. this fixes that discrepancy, making sure both the building code and the planning code treat tenants the same way, regardless of the legal status of the building they live in. all tenants should have the right to legal due process and should be able to appeal the same way. as it stands today, because tenants of unwarranted units receive no notice, their ability to act in a timely manner should they choose to do so, is essentially impossible. the fact our code treats tenants differently based on their units' legal status is so remarkable that the board of permit appeals took the unusual step earlier this year of calling upon the board of supervisors to fix this. the legislation before you today does just that.

so just briefly in a nutshell what this ordinance does is pass along the same noticing requirements for the removal of the legal unit to unwarranted units as well and also adds requirements for language and direction for tenants in terms of where they can go for counsel and help should they choose to appeal and/or fight the eviction. with that i would urge your support and i'm here to answer any questions, thank you. >> i just want to make a note that president mccarthy was excused for a previous engagement. commissioner walker. >> thank you, vice >> thank you, vice president mar i would like to thank supervisor wiener's office for

working on this. this basically levels the playing field and provides tenants equal process to due process so i would ask for your support in supporting this and thank you again, supervisor wiener's office and staff. >> yes, thank you again for the report. i was just wondering, i notice our code and advisory committee president is here. i was wondering if this was discussed in our code advisely committee, which often times legislation is. >> yes, the letter of recommendation was in your packet. they supported it. >> so move. >> is there public comment on

this item? would one of the commissioners like to make a motion? >> mccray moved it. >> second. >> there is a motion and a second to approve the item. i will do a roll call vote. vice president mar, yes. commissioner clinch, yes. commissioner mccray, yes. commissioner melgar, yes. commissioner walker, yes. commissioner lee, yes. the motion carries unanimously. item 6, discussion and possible action regarding a possible san francisco building code change to section 106a.4.1.423 scope dleeding the reference to the uaf john bloomen report.

>> my name is kurt means from the building inspection technical services division and also secretary to the code advisory committee. the code advisory committee would like to bring a code change before you, it's a change to san francisco building code section 106a.4.1 .1.4.3, which is part of the slope protection act which is in our administrative section a and in particular the scoping of that act. the slope protection act is a piece of legislation that was put in place to deal with land slides, steep slopes, unstable slopes, that have become worse in the case of an earthquake or a seismic event. so what it did is it required a higher

level of plan review on all those projects that fit within a map of possible affected properties. special geologic reports and geologists reports and structural advisory outside review of these projects. the subject properties lie within, i have to read this, the maps are called the following, erkt quake induced land slide in the seismic hazard zone map released by california department of kaupbts vaition division of mines and geology dated 17, 2000, or amendments there to. the second map is land slide hazard areas map as land slide locations in figure 4 of the san francisco seismic investigation report prepared by urs john a bloom and

associates, engineers, june 1974 or successor map thereto. so that's the second map. if you are in either one of those, you are to treat your project, we are to treat your project appropriately. the code change has to do with removing one of those maps from the options here. and in particular it's the bloom map. there's a little history on the bloom report and map, we had an ert quake in 1906, 40 years late orer so, 1948 we had our first seismic provisions put into the building code. in the 70's, early 70's, the state passed senate bill 1489, i think it is, requiring cities to add a seismic element to their city planning maps. so the planning department here in

san francisco hired urs john a bloom and associates, engineers, to conduct a report so that they would know what those hazards were. in 2008 the slope protection act -- i think it was 2008 -- slope protection act was passed and referenced the maps in that report. and so in this code change the idea of removing the bloom report from one of those maps, it went through, it was fully vetted through our structural subcommittee. you have a recommendation before you for support of removal. basically the bloom report was done in 1974, june, and hasn't been revised since so we're dealing with a lot of old data

in that report, where the other report was released in 2000 and it is a state generated map that gets updated through the passing of all our geological reports on to the state. i just want to read a couple real short things right out of the bloom report that kind of will help my explanation. it says, information considered appropriate to the general purposes of the study was sleted from published and unpublic blushed investigations performed by government agencies, private firms and individuals. although these data should not be regarded as generally applicable -- should be regarded as generally applicable and dependable, con if i recall maition of their accuracy or reliability is not within the scope of this report. so at the time, 1974, when they were putting this together, they just took any

general information that they had gathered it up and the report, actually this is a copy of the original bloom report. so they just needed general data, they didn't need to, weren't going to take the time to investigate each report to find out exactly what it is, they just wanted to get something in place and were told to do so by the state. a little bit later in the swroe deduction -- introduction of the bloom report it says because those maps showing hazard areas due to liquefaction and subside dance are intended to be conservative, new information will in most instances result in diminishing the size of the hazard area. that's exactly what's happened. as these reports were scent on to the state and the state updated all the

information, they have from seismic events they have all the data transmitted to them, they have all the reports and it's actually narrowed the properties that were, that are in this area. we now know that this property is not an issue any more. it's a long ways from the land slide area because we have data now that it's not in it. so in deleting this one map it's just narrowing the scope to the more specific properties and that's the basic idea of this change. any questions? >> any questions from commissioners? >> if it weren't for public comment i'd say motion to approve. >> is there any public comment first on this item? seeing none, commissioner, do you have a motion? >> move to approve.

>> second. >> there is a motion and a second. i will do a roll call vote. vice president mar, yes. commissioner clinch, yes. commissioner mccray, yes. commissioner melgar, yes. commissioner walker, yes. and commissioner lee, yes. motion carries unanimously. item 7, discussion regarding noe street. >> good morning,

commissioners, ron tom, executive drktor. i am going to speak to the commission about 571 noe street which was put on the agenda by commissioner mar at last month's meeting. i have pictures from google map that provides months and years for the progress of work or lack of work on this project. this is march 2013, what it looked like before work was done and a picture of it in november 2013, still no barricade or work, evidence of work being done. and march 2014 we can see a

barricade having been placed on the project. august, the activity, there's no activity on this, the project is still barricaded and finally from december 2014 we also have the same condition. so the reason i put this up is just for background. we know the job has been stopped and currently there's no work on the project, inspector bernie curran has been out there, he has pictures also, the picture of the most current status and he will be speaking about activities that he executed on his own. i mean, represented the department toward the end of the activity on the job, which was when they still had workers there and they were on

the roof, what was the roof before and had removed rafters that define that roof and replaced them. >> commissioners, you have also a spreadsheet that was provided for you and that is background information that i prepared. one has to do with the complaints as they came in and the description of each complaint and the activities under the comments section which delineates what we did as a department. on the flip side are the permits that were issued. out of four, three of them have been issued and the one that is really stopping the work, at least the way we interpret it, is the lack of ability for the owner/contractor to proceed to add the extra floor on the top as a vertical extension. and currently is still under review, it's gotten its entitlement from planning but now with the nuts and bolts plans are going through the

process with the building department and other sister agencies. the issue, i believe, had to do with whether we have complaints that stay in the books as part of the question and the answer is yes, there are complaints that are on the books, we have notice of violation that were issued. we have one that i highlighted we should be posting, which is no. 5 under the complaints, but pending, after today's hearing for information we will be executing that one nov that is still outstanding, which is that last yellow one, item 5 on the complaint side. i'm going to turn the mic over to senior inspector bernie

curran because he had the last contact with the contractor on the job. >> good morning inspectors, senior inspector bernie curran this is from last october. as you can see, nothing has really changed out there. that's the same thing there. i want to see the one with the, it shows the -- here, this is the one. this shows some of the work in question. if you look at this op area here, that's where they have done a structural upgrade on the roof rafters which was on the approved set of plans. but unbeknowns to me when we first got the complaint the description of all the work did

not list that. so i got an irate phone call from the project sponsor, i said come in with your approved plans, let's take a look. when he arrived at our office, we went through the plans it was on an approved set of drawings which i have a copy of here. it states here in these highlighted areas that they are replacing the existing framing with 2 by 12's instead of what was there before, 2 by 4's. >> was that a permit issued by planning or over the counter by us? >> i think that went with the set of plans. it's a full set of plans but that might not have gone through planning because they are just reframing the existing roof, not changing the facade or anything at that point. >> and that permit was issued before the nov or after the nov >> before. before, yeah.

>> thank you. >> so the reason this was brought to my attention and actually visited the site and your picture shows exactly the way it still looks today, because actually i live in that neighborhood. that's why i get called about this stuff. so there's a couple of different things. one is i know that when i looked up the permit tracking system it was scheduled for director's hearing and then when you got involved it got pulled from the director's hearing, so there was kind of a question about why it did not proceed on the nov track even though understand e contractor might have hit hard times or something might have happened. but usually wae would proceed with the abatement of the nov and then, you know, if he came before the director's hearing or whatever and said, i'm in

the process then at least it would have been heard and it would have been documented. so that was question no. 1. even some of the grid that i got today is not clear to me why even in some of the yellow highlighted part that we were given today, why would we close -- close the case? why would the close the case? >> it was pulled back from director's hearing because when it became apparent that the work they were cited for was actually on a valid set of approved drawings i asked for the case to be set back. it was an administrative error that it was not closed. the case should have been closed. >> but why would -- okay, so they got a permit to do one, to do that structural work which you are talking about. but they had --. >> that and a bunch of other work. demolition, there's quite a bit of work, $175,000

permit. >> so were there other nov's that were still outstanding or your understanding was that permit resolved all the nov's? you know what i mean? >> commissioner mar, the reason i prepared this is so you could more readily see in one quick shot what occurred and the sequence of events. the one that was pulled back, the complaint for that one, demo and foundation work without a permit, they had a permit. the work has caused blooding on the neighbor's basement. i don't know what occurred on that, frankly, but whether they had a permit or not, they did have a permit and that permit was the last two digits of 28. so you flip to this one on the permit side and you look at the description of work, you see how extensive it is? >> uh-huh. >> it's incorporated, the one thing it doesn't cover at the 2 by 12 on the ceiling and that is on part of the approved

plans that we have on the overhead. so bottom line is they had a permit. it's our policy when you have a permit that's not -- and you are not working outside the scope of the permit, there is no reason we would schedule a hearing. so really we should close it out so it doesn't just sit in the books as an open complaint because they have a permit. >> right, got it. thank you. >> i appreciate that clarification. so i guess the other question, because they stopped work for a couple years due to whatever, which you might be privy to, but there's been other things that it's been sitting there empty for a long time now, i think over a year. i mean when i went by, and your picture shows the same thing, the barricade or those, the plywood has been up so long it's gray now. so it's definitely aged with the weather and everything

else. i think part of the complaint from the neighbors is almost like an abandoned building. is it registered as an abandoned building? should it be secured as an abandoned building without a roof and a foundation and that kind of thing. >> i think it's our policy that as long as there's an issued permit it won't be considered an abandoned building. truthfully i think they didn't think the planning process would be this long. it's been a year. they were told, look, don't do any more work. i think they were probably hoping that their pr mitt would come out in time and they could keep going and stand walls on that new roof. but that didn't happen and it's been a year and there they sit. >> thank you very much for your point and the clarification, both of you. is there any other questions from the commissioners or public -- i guess we can open it up for public comment at

this time. >> vice president mar, members of the commission, mi name is joe butter, i'm an architect here in the city. i'm curious as to why permit no. 1 on the back of the form, 201206112328, it was filed on june 11, 2012, it was issued on 5-23-2014, i believe that's 23 months later. and if you look, reconstruct original front facade and stairs, this is a permit that requires planning approval, perhaps that's why it was not issued for 23 months, they wanted to do this work but they didn't want planning to stop them. if you look under house

demolition, (inaudible) there's no roof. this is not demolition for discovery, this is demolition to add a new story of construction that's not allowed by these permit applications. if you look at the fourth one, vertical addition, they finally got to it, they finally fessed up to what this was about and in the interim they tortured your department, they tortured the neighbors, we hear it's a $175,000 permit but i don't know if the scope under no. 4 includes $175,000 worth of work. that sounds like a whole new ball of wax to me. i'm not quite sure why this didn't get a director's report. maybe it's because just as it was headed for a director's report in 2013 -- no, no, the first permit, the one that allowed all the work, still hadn't issued in 2014. the second one -- okay, here we go,

complaint on march 10, 2014. and on 4-18-2014 it was sent over, should bid should close the case. the only thing they had to do was exploratory demo work. oh, under separate permit, which separate permit? this is serial permitting at its best. it allows the contractor to go in with little up front investment, you leave a permit on the counter in case you need it later to get out of a director's report and you tear this out and then your economics change and you leave it for the neighbors to sit on for 2 or 3 years. this started in may of 2012 and we're in october of 2015. this is

unexcusable. how did this not get to a director's hearing? that's the question. thank you. >> deputy director? >> commissioners, some questions were just posed by the public so i would like the opportunity to answer a few of them. the value for the vertical addition right now in the department as stated by the applicant is $85,000 in addition to the other permit. this is the one that's currently being reviewed. that doesn't mean that it's not going to be possibly increased because our staff has to look at it and often times we will increase the amount if increase the amount if it's justified secondly, why did it take so long, permit no. 28, the foundation work is included

in the approved drawings. the time, the length of time from june the 12th of 2012 to november the 18th of 2013, so we're talking about way over a year, that was in planning. it was in planning. that can account for the time it took that our department in building did not even have a chance to look at it. after it came to us, it came to us and we received it on november the 18th, about november the 18th and it was issued -- november 18th, 2013 it was issued after everybody, all the agencies approved it on may 23, 2014.14. >> so that first permit was a planning permit? >> the one that's very inclusive, the one that captures the foundation, that went to planning. it was there for over a year.

>> the one that started, date filed in 12 and date issued, 14. >> june 11, 2012. >> that was planning. >> yeah. >> so we issued a violation for work done without a permit because it was. the work that was done, that was included in the plan that was shown to us, wasn't approved until 2014, correct? >> correct. >> so the work done prior to that was in violation and i tend to agree that when, i mean, regardless of what happened after the fact, there is a violation that occurs, it needed to go to planning to be val watted, but they did the work anyway. >> well, they took out a permit that was more inclusive interior work. so that's the

no. 2 on the complaint side. you can see on the comment, the last two digits, 19, issued on 11-14-2013 and the description, you can see it's the same description on the opposite side of the permits. >> which was in response, major demo without a permit. 2 by 12s are replacing that. that wasn't approved so there is a violation that was real. i mean to the point that the member of the public brought forward that there was a violation because work was done, even if a permit was issued after the fact by planning, the work that was done on the first permit was not authorized. >> commissioner walker, what i don't have is a chronology of the actual work done on the site. >> on the first permit.

>> relative to the time frame of that permit with the last two digits of 19. >> right. okay. >> that was the second one. because that was issued on 1 1-14-2013. i don't have a chronology of physically what happened on the job site up to that point. >> and neithers do i. but what i saw and i know there's a barricade up, but what i could see and i think inspector curran will confirm that the house is basically gutted. it's down to the studs, what you can see by looking through the barricade, it's on piles or piers or whatever, and there is no roof. that's the way it is today. what some of the neighbors' complaints to me are is after they were given that house exploratory demo permit in 13, which i believe they may

have gotten over the counter, they basically gutted the house. >> they were given a notice of violation for exceeding the scope of that demo permit. they went and got another, called it administrative permit with a penalty and another fee to cover their expanded scope. so that scope probably entailed demoing the roof rafters as well because that came in another structural drawing that they have approved. >> so they didn't contest it and they didn't do a director's hearing, they just paid the fee and proceeded. >> correct. >> i mean the issue, i think, is that ideally they don't touch the whole thing until they have the whole story and i think --. >> was some of this done under the guise of structural upgrade with their vertical addition in mind? sure. but at what point do we as building inspectors

say, hey, you are lying, you are not reinforcing your roof, you are building another floor. >> that's a question we ask you. how do we avoid this? because now it's sitting there open to the elements. >> part of it, and again i don't want to infer, and i appreciate this report because it shows the chronology of your work, which is very important. this begs the question i think for us on a bigger level is that some people have, are pretty good at gaming the system. sometimes within our system they can game it even if you go out there, you can obl see what you can see on that given day. >> true. >> then you can write what you saw that day and then the next day they come out and do something else. so unless we camp there sometimes we don't catch all the gaming that's going on. but i think it still begs the question, though, when we issue

some over the counter permit is the question of how much actually gets done and how quickly. and maybe they should have gone to planning, the very beginning and submitted the whole thing. >> that would be nice. thank you. >> thank you. at the end of item 8, update and discussion of the code enforcement backlog. >> a lot today. >> ron tom, assistant director, i'm picking up, i'm backing up deputy director dan lawry, he's on vacation. so i'm going to do the best i can to try to provide you information that may be useful but if you want to have it redirected, please feel free to do that and if we can get

different direction we will investigate it and develop information that's more focused to what you would like to have. so in trying my best to provide some meaningful information for the commission, i want to start with what we consider a backlog in our department so that we can bring some level of definition and parameters to it. the best case i have is like in the permitting side when you have a lot of plans that are assigned to various staff on the plan side, if you've opened it up it's not on backlog but if you are checking for conformity to the building code, you have started and it's not part of your backlog any longer because our staff will enter it into their daily

activity report as a permit application number and they've actually started the work. to be consistent, when we look at complaints that come into the department, our expectations are either somebody has been assigned either to a district inspector or to the complaint team on building side or something similar arrangement in the electrical and the plumbing and housing i'm not going to speak to that because i'm not really versed in housing. chief building inspector rosemary boske is here and if we want to talk about housing she's more than qualified. staying with the 3 divisions plus code enforcement i will talk about as well. the 3 divisions, the characteristics of their complaints are different. plumbing is different, electrical is different, both in the nature of the complaints and the quantity of the complaints. it's very dramatic

when i start giving you some of these numbers. so if you haven't investigated, you haven't taken any action, to us that is a backlog. because you have in the records a complaint but nobody's even bothered to open it yet or unable to open it. so for us it's backlog. once you open it and start reviewing the case and at least you would expect then to have a plan of action because you, first thing you do if it says work without permit, well, our inspector will check to see is there a permitality all for this property. if this isn't you put it in your schedule to investigate it visually, gain access to access to the property please keep in mind there's many occasions where the inspector

can't gain access because they refuse. plumbing inspection division for this entire year -- and by the way i have different reporting periods given to me by our various divisions. so what i try to do is give you a sense of how much of a complaint, how much complaints they get a month. plumbing inspection averaged for this year 98 complaints a month. of those, they have addressed a total, out of total of this year of 928 complaints that they receive they have closed out 879. that means they are no longer on the books. they are done, they are closed out. that's about a 95 percent rate of closing out cases. they have 49 currently that are active, they are being addressed. so, again, it could be they have opened it, they

actually may have written a notice of violation or they are still trying to gain access to the property. in case of the number that have no action at all, which our staff would classify and our chiefs would classify as a backlog, zero. everything they have received in plumbing they have taken an action on, even if it means they have visited the site and nobody is there. so that would not be part of the backlog. electricitial also does not receive that many complaints. electrical for all of last year and all the way until this past week, middle of october they have 517 complaints received, that averaged out about 24 complaints a month. so plumbing was 98 xlaipblts a month, electricitial is 24

complaints a month and they have 67 active complaints being addressed currently. for us there essentially is no backlog in electrical. building inspection, by comparison, have a significant number, and housing as well. looking at the period from january 1st of last year all the way to the middle of september they had 5,764 complaints that they received and they were able to close out 4,414, that's about a 77 percent rate. so on average you are looking at 281 complaints a month that they have to handle. now please bear in mind, commissioners, our inspectors do have to, when it's district

inspector, they have their assigned duties which is an inspection of paid for and scheduled inspections. on top of that we add these if it's in their district. for other reasons i don't need to get into, if they aren't the ones assigned to our team of two complaint inspectors but they do it as well. currently there are 1350 active complaints, those are being addressed. so in various stages including visiting the site, trying to gain access, just dropping off notices to the site or actually issuing notice of violation and there are 18 that right now we would call inactive. before i move on to code

enforcement is there any question about how that, the numbers i have provided to you or the characterization of the number of complaints, the average number per inspection group or how much they have achieved? okay, so i'm going to move on to the code enforcement section. code enforcement section, the question last time was what's the sense of backlog in terms of items waiting for director's hearing. let's be clear how do they start, what is their starting point? code enforcement receives their inspection referrals for code enforcement and director's hearing from the 3 divisions: electricitial, plumbing and inspection. when they receive it, what constitutes a backlog, opening a case and beginning a

process of preparing for a director's hearing. the first order of business, sending out a letter to the property owner notifying that there's a monitoring fee that's going to be imposed. now, sometimes that actually initiates a response by the owner to go out and get a permit or address the issue that's covered in the note us of violation. once they start that, that's not part of the backlog. so to summarize more usable fashion, right now there are 6 cases what we call a backlog in code enforcement and they arrive as of the beginning of last week. everything else has either already received the monitoring fee notification and an inspector in the code enforcement section has opened the case and started to look at the file and process going through the information that's

contained and to verify whether there's a permit already issued during the time it was in transfer from the building, plumbing or electrical. to reiterate, if they haven't opened the file and started investigation, it would be a backlog. if they have it would not constitute a director's hearing backlog. >> i appreciate the report and maybe just to pass on to chief inspector lowry because i know you are just kind of filling in for him, but this was a question that came to him before. i think we feel that backlogs you guys have been handling a lot better, especially with the newer complaints. but what the commission wants to get a sense of, especially the abatement

appeal side, by the time a case comes before us sometimes it's been years. so for us our definition is different. the way we look at it, when a nov is issued is it abated or in the process of being abated. that's what we're more concerned about is the backlog in terms of either the person is taking positive actions, whether it's pulling a permit or addressing the problem and working out some type of time frame with the department and of course if they apply to planning, yes, that sometimes hangs us up there for a long time. but that's what we look at it either as an abatement or it moves forward. either they abate it or it ends up with abatement appeal. so that's kind of what we were, we were actually -- one of the questions we had asked deputy

director lowry was to point out the longer standing one, not just the ones that get -- those are great. >> members of the commission, good morning, rosemary boske, deputy chief housing inspector. essentially what you are saying is what is the strategy that the staff has to deal with trying to abate open code enforcement cases as quickly as possible with the tools we have. one of the things we do in the housing division is -- and part of this is because of the automation -- a backlog case is essentially one where

it's open and you now need to take additional action or circle back to it because things can change over a period of time. the notice of violation could have required a permit, a permit could have been filed but then there's no activity, was issued, no, there's no work or whatever, you have to surk he will back and see at that point in time should it go to a director's hearing or if a director's hearing has already been done, does it rate going to the litigation division. in addition to the three or four hundred new cases we get any new month which doesn't necessarily include systematic enforcement or referrals from other agencies, inspections on

buildings that might be touched by public funding either through a block of rooms or a master lease program, in addition to that where we have certain response times, we have to respond in a certain number of business days as those are coming in, we're keeping up with that, dealing with the vacancies which i'm happy to report we just filled most of our vacancies within the last 3 weeks, but what we do is we have a standard report that we give out every inspector that is assigned to the field and it has two different components on it, all the open cases that have notices of violation and all the open cases that do not. and we ask them to go through with their supervisor and see what is happening with that and see if addition al action needs to be taken. we do that

because there isn't an automated way to do that at this point in time. (brief pause in captioning).

route now that's all done manually. excella will be able to automate that so it goes through each item that you

identified on the notice of violation and says what happened and it tracks it for you, so that means from a computer standpoint i can go back and reach into that and ask for a report rather than spend the clerical and the staff, the inspectors -- when they are doing this they are not in the field responding, they have to sit in front of a computer and do this. they can't do it from a satellite situation, they can't do it from a laptop, they have to be sitting in the office to do it. but we find this is most effective. i'll tell you, i keep telling my staff we have the best interest in going ahead and closing cases as legitimately as we can so we have the least number of cases as we go live because it's less problematic. it's something staff understands and they are doing everything possible to accommodate that. and we do have the, under the director's report, the code enforcement. i can handle that route now if you have any

questions, my numbers pretty much are very consistent. some of them dip down because of the vacancies as i want to report, 5 of my vacancies are now full, we just had three new inspectors with the assistance of the director and our hr on october 5th, we lost one individual down to another division so we'll be filling that particular vacancy sometime in the future, but we have those inspectors out the second day they were here out in the field shadowing other individuals. so they will be expected to be out there writing notices of violations shortly. thank you. >> thank you. i just want to note that commissioner melgar and commissioner clinch have been excused. i know we're running a little late but i want to thank all the other commissioners for sticking with it and thank you very much for the staff report. i'm sure we're going to follow-up on it the next meeting. >> is there any public comment on this item? seeing none,

item 9, director's report, 9a, update on dbi finances. >> good afternoon, commissioners, tara madison, deputy director for the department of building inspection. in your pactet to the year to date financial report. it's basically the first quarter year for 15-16 so i will just take a couple minutes to go over some of the highlights. on the revenue side you can see revenues continue to do very well. in fact this year we've collected about two million dollars more than last year this time. that's reflected, if you took at page 2 you will see permits are up, permits have increased about 400 more than the same time last year and the valuation has also increased overall about 10 1/2 percent. on the expenditure side, our expenditures are also up from last year and of course we've

been working on, we've been making sure that we fill positions and that we use up our budget and spend all the money as commissioner walker always reminds us to do. we're up about 10 percent from last year, we've spent about a million dollars more from last year and if you were comparing the biggest increase in expenditures would be salaries for this year from july to september we spent 1.6 million more on salaries and fringes and that reflects the hiring that we've done. chief housing inspetor boske talked a little bit about the positions she filled, actually the housing positions but i looked back and from july through september of this year is he far we've hired about 20 new positions. so we are on our way. materials and supplies were also, we've also increased that from last year. so those are the two big places where we've increased. if you look at the first page we have our projections,

basically the budget and that's because the first quarter is such a limited amount of data. a lot of the first two months in particular we're actually closing out the old fiscal year and setting up new po's so we'll start making some projections probably after october to kind of get a good sense of where we are. i'll be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you for your report. not this meeting, maybe next i was wondering if the commission could get a more detailed report on just the expenditures for the excella project and maybe answer the question if you can about what's left so we can kind of resolve this about whether there's going to be shortfall or not. >> okay, i can do that. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> 9b, update on proposed or recently enacted state legislation. >> good afternoon, commissioners, bill strong, legislative and public affairs. i'd first like to mention some

new legislation introduced just yesterday by supervisor wiener, which is a package of code enforcement reforms. we have been meeting periodically with the supervisor, commissioner water actually joined in some of those meetings. we have another meeting scheduled next week to go through some of the issues and concerns we have in what was introduced yesterday. rosemary boske has gone through and provided the supervisor's staff with some detailed areas that are going to be part of our discussion, also be a city attorney present and i'm sure we'll be able to resolve some of these issues that need to be resolved. the good news from this is the supervisor believes what we have been doing on code enforcement is the model. he's trying to see that extended and the process unified across the fire department and also the

department of public health so that --. >> and planning. >> so that we'll have a better overall process. we all agree that we're happy to work towards that end. there is one element in this that we think still needs discussion and that has to do with the actual administration of fund that is now on reserve and subject to supplemental appropriation that the supervisor provided, $2 million this fiscal year, $2 million next fiscal year. the director has made it very clear that administering funds for low interest loans is not something we do, it's not really our skill set. we've requested that either the office of small business or the mayor's office of housing, which does have expertise and experience in this area, actually be involved and supervisor's office agreed to look into that. so that

remains yet to be finalized as far as we're concerned. one other matter of legislation, we're having a meeting with supervisor avalos' office actually later today to talk a little bit about the unit legalization program. the supervisor is interested in seeing whether or not funds from the mayor's housing trust fund might be used to assist people in getting the resources together to do a unit legalization. as you probably know from the reports we've been providing, to date we've had about 66 that have actually had issued permits, we probably have another 10 or 12 that have been approved and issued but are awaiting the owners to come in and pick them up. that still amounts to roughly

72-74 issues permits and we've had more than 3,000 inquiries. we've had about 270 permit applications filed. you probably also remember that due to legislation by the mayor we have now waived the plan review fee for both building and planning on unit legalizations and that amounts to roughly $3500 in savings. that took effect september the 5th. at least per my discussion with staff, just before this meeting, we have not yet seen any bump as a result of that fee waiver but obviously it's early days. that may still come to pass. and the one final fee waiver issue, as you know, every may we have the fee waiver for awning replacements and facade improvements. in the past 4 or

5 years that we've been doing that program we haven't had a lot of uptake from the public. the supervisors have now made that permanent city-wide. we're hoping there will be more outreach this year and as a result we may actually see more people coming in to do that, but i will say that the supervisor tang's office has already taken steps to expand those waivers to also include any possible fire department fees or department of public works fees. as i understand it, both departments are quite amenable to cooperating with that again throughout the month of may which is, you know, national building inspection month as well as small business month nationally that we try to observe every year. with that, i'll take any questions you might have.

>> just on that waiver of the fees for the facades, can we get a report since it's city-wide, especially. it would be nice to get the report by district and we could tell the supervisors how their districts did. >> be happy to do that. i'll work with las on that, of course. >> thank you. >> item 9c, update on major projects. >> good afternoon, commissioners, for major project is roughly the same. just slightly over 4 percent, a little more than last period. any question you have on the major project? >> thank you. >> seeing none, 9d, update on code enforcement. >> commissioners, ron tom, assistant director. for the month of september for

the building inspection division they performed 4,883 inspections. they received 390 complaints. they responded to those complaints within 24 to 72 hours to the tune of 224, complaints with first notice of violation sent were 30, complaints received and abated without penalty, 224. abated complaints with notice of violations, 22, and second notice of violations referred to code enforcement, 7. housing inspection services. housing inspections performed, 954. complaints received, 393. complaint response within 24 to 72 hours, 387. complaints with notice of violations issued, 460. abated complaints

with nov's, 287. and the number of cases sent to director's hearing, 22. and they conducted 184 routine inspections. code enforcement cases, the number of cases sent to director's hearing, 49. the number of order of abatements issued, 19. and the number of cases under advisement, 6. number of cases abated, 35. code enforcement inspections performed, 499 and the number of cases referred to bic litigation committee, 1. and the number of cases referred to the city attorney, none. >> thank you. i think you got most of the discussion from the last report so thank you. >> very good. thank you, commissioners. >> is there any public comment on item 9, director's report items 9a through d seeing

none, item 10, review and approval of the minutes of the regular meeting of april 15, 2015. >> move to approve. >> second. >> there is a motion and a second. is there any public comment on the minutes? seeing none, are all commissioners in favor? any opposed? the minutes are approved. out of 11 commissioners questions and matters, 9a, inquiries to staff, at this time commissioners may make inquiries to staff regarding various documents, policies, practices and procedures which are of interest to the commission. none at this time? item 9b, future meetings and agendas, at this time the commission may discuss and take actions to set the date of a special meeting and/or determine those items to be placed on the agenda of a future meeting and other meetings of the building inspection commission. our

next scheduled meeting is november 18th. >> thank you. >> and we will hear from the president if we need to have a meeting around the excella. >> okay. >> thank you. is there any public comment on item 11a or b seeing none, item 12, adjournment. is there a motion to adjourn? >> so moved. >> second. >> thank you. >> all commissioners in favor, aye. we are now adjourned. it is 12.50pm thank you. (meeting adjourned).adjourned.

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>> good afternoon good afternoon, everyone. everyone the meeting will come to order this is the regularly middle east of the san francisco land use & economic development committee to my right is is supervisor scott wiener and to my left is is supervisor jane kim our clerk alicia i'd like to thank jennifer lowe and jessie larson sfwr sfgovtv for broadcasting this meeting madam clerk madam clerk, any announcements? >> questions all electronic devices. completed speaker cards and documents to be included should be subed