>> thank you for having me. [applause] >> thank you so much. god bless you all, ladies. i love you. [applause]

>> it starts with us. we have to be together, no matter what. thank you so much. god bless you, take care. [applause] >> all right. give it up for ledeci. give it up for ledeci one last time. she can hear you back stage. [applause] >> there you go. the mayor told me that she would pack into a crowded cafe

and listen to ledeci years ago, so here she is back on the mayor's stage. so i got a promise from the mayor back stage that she wants to see you back he volunteers. >> my name is mark a proud grand date i didn't all over san francisco residents are adopt rains to keep our sewer system healthy i'm adopted a grain draining i thought of a simple illusion to a big problem it will help out the neighborhood and be responsible for the places we live i want or apparent to the web site and [♪] ♪ homelessness in san francisco is considered the number 1 issue by most people who live here, and it doesn't just affect neighbors without a home, it affects all of us. is real way to combat that is to work together. it will take city departments and nonprofit providers and

volunteers and companies and community members all coming together. [♪] >> the product homeless connect community day of service began about 15 years ago, and we have had 73 of them. what we do is we host and expo-style event, and we were the very force organization to do this but it worked so well that 250 other cities across the globe host their own. there's over 120 service providers at the event today, and they range anywhere from hygiene kits provided by the basics, 5% -- to prescription glasses and reading glasses, hearing tests, pet sitting, showers, medical services, flu shots, dental care, groceries, so many phenomenal service providers, and what makes it so unique is we ask that they

provide that service today here it is an actual, tangible service people can leave with it. >> i am with the hearing and speech center of northern california, and we provide a variety of services including audiology, counselling, outreach, education, today we actually just do screening to see if someone has hearing loss. to follow updates when they come into the speech center and we do a full diagnostic hearing test, and we start the process of taking an impression of their year, deciding on which hearing aid will work best for them. if they have a smart phone, we make sure we get a smart phone that can connect to it, so they can stream phone calls, or use it for any other services that they need. >> san francisco has phenomenal social services to support people at risk of becoming homeless, are already experience and homelessness, but it is confusing, and there is a lot of waste. bringing everyone into the same space not only saves an average of 20 hours a week in navigating the system and waiting in line for different areas, it helps them talk, so if you need to sign up for medi-cal, what you

need identification, you don't have to go to sacramento or wait in line at a d.m.v., you go across the hall to the d.m.v. to get your i.d. ♪ today we will probably see around 30 people, and averaging about 20 of this people coming to cs for follow-up service. >> for a participant to qualify for services, all they need to do is come to the event. we have a lot of people who are at risk of homelessness but not yet experiencing it, that today's event can ensure they stay house. many people coming to the event are here to receive one specific need such as signing up for medi-cal or learning about d.m.v. services, and then of course, most of the people who are tender people experiencing homelessness today. >> i am the representative for the volunteer central. we are the group that checks and all the volunteers that comment participate each day. on a typical day of service, we have anywhere between 40500 volunteers that we, back in, they get t-shirts, nametags,

maps, and all the information they need to have a successful event. our participant escorts are a core part of our group, and they are the ones who help participants flow from the different service areas and help them find the different services that they needs. >> one of the ways we work closely with the department of homelessness and supportive housing is by working with homeless outreach teams. they come here, and these are the people that help you get into navigation centers, help you get into short-term shelter, and talk about housing-1st policies. we also work very closely with the department of public health to provide a lot of our services. >> we have all types of things that volunteers deal do on a day of service. we have folks that help give out lunches in the café, we have folks who help with the check in, getting people when they arrive, making sure that they find the services that they need to, we have folks who help in the check out process, to make sure they get their food bag, bag of groceries, together

hygiene kit, and whatever they need to. volunteers, i think of them as the secret sauce that just makes the whole process works smoothly. >> participants are encouraged and welcomed to come with their pets. we do have a pet daycare, so if they want to have their pets stay in the daycare area while they navigate the event, they are welcome to do that, will we also understand some people are more comfortable having their pets with them. they can bring them into the event as well. we also typically offer veterinary services, and it can be a real detriment to coming into an event like this. we also have a bag check. you don't have to worry about your belongings getting lost, especially when that is all that you have with you. >> we get connected with people who knew they had hearing loss, but they didn't know they could get services to help them with their hearing loss picks and we are getting connected with each other to make sure they are getting supported. >> our next event will be in march, we don't yet have a date set. we typically sap set it six weeks out. the way to volunteer is to

follow our newsletter, follow us on social media, or just visit our website. we always announce it right away, and you can register very easily online. >> a lot of people see folks experience a homelessness in the city, and they don't know how they can help, and defence like this gives a whole bunch of people a lot of good opportunities to give back and be supported. [♪]

>> good morning, everyone, thank you for coming to city hall. being here today. my name is naomi kelly, the city administrator for the city and county of san francisco. and i want to welcome you all to the tall building safety strategy summit. i'm very pleased with the turnout this morning, so i really can't thank you enough for spending your morning with us today, this is very important what we are doing and talking about the resilience of our buildings in the downtown san francisco neighborhood. as you know, there are much -- our skyline has changed and we see many more tall buildings there, and many of the tall buildings are not just office buildings but residential buildings and talking about the resilience of the city. happy to be with you all here today. a great opportunity for city officials, staff, experts, stakeholders, to engage in recommendations set forth by the tall building safety strategy which was originally released

last october. i want to thank tom, the director of building inspections. tom is right here. [applause] >> mary ellen carroll, director of the department of emergency management is right here. [applause] i'm not sure, i don't see her in the crowd but may be, kathy howe, the assistant general manager of infrastructure for the san francisco public utilities commission. but the four of us really started working on the resilience of our tall buildings well, a few years ago. a couple years ago, and have spent a lot of time with the applied technology council, office of resilience and capital planning, brian strong, and to really make sure that we think about these buildings in a different way than we have in the past. you all have a copy of the tall building safety strategy. it's the first of its kind in the nation. and it brings us together today.

during the summit you will hear from many people who care deeply about making sure our tall buildings and infrastructure is strong. but we also want to focus on an open public discourse. we want to focus on engaging you on how we should prioritize the 16 recommendations that were in this strategy. and we need to think about the next big earthquake. i say this all the time in almost every public speech but i can't say it enough to remind us why we are here today that the u.s. geological survey estimates san francisco will have a 72% of an earthquake of a 6.7 magnitude in the next 30 years. so, we need to think about this on a regular basis and keep this in the forefront of our minds. thankfully we have a community of renouned experts to make sure the highly complex structures are well equipped and resilience for the safety of our residents, workers and visitors. again, thank you all for joining us here today and now i would

like to invite a member of the applied technology council, greg deerline, professor at stanford, and who has been our guiding expert on structural engineering to help us understand these tall buildings in san francisco. greg. >> okay. thank you, naomi, for the nice introduction. yes, so it's really a pleasure to be here today and report on behalf of the team and the applied technology council that put together the tall building strategy in a more detailed report available online and your folder. many of the members on the team are with us here today and will be participating in the later panel discussions. thinking about the plan itself, and really has history back in the work that san francisco did, the community action plan for seismic safety initiated some years ago of pioneering effort,

to bring together professional, emergency managers, working with the city and the communities in the city to think about the vulnerability and infrastructure and so on. so this tall building project follows on that, recognizing that some of the action plan is looking at the existing, and whether retrofits are required and recognizing that tall buildings and other special structures are unique, ways that you would inspect or think about a 3, 4-story wood frame structure is different than a modern or older high rise building. one of the genesis and motivation for the project. one of the first things to get a handle on the tall buildings in the city. san francisco is proactive with s.f. data, inventory of buildings, we added on to that, looking specifically at tall buildings and focussing above those 240 foot tall. nothing magic about the 240

number, it's a trigger in the building code for certain requirements, but any building of that size or close to it could be important to look at. so, this was partly, this inventory online, you know, categorizes some of the details, occupancy and so forth of the tall buildings. and so some of the things that we looked at there, for example, occupancies in the tall buildings, recognizing that about half the tall buildings, office occupancy, the other half are either residential or mixed use occupancy, and the balance is changing over time. basically the tall buildings are primarily steel construction built in the 1960s through the 1980s, on the other hand, proliferation and residential construction is more reinforced concrete, often sheer wall system, so thinks about the occupancy of the building. also think about the structural systems, important for earthquake engineers to advise

on the expected performance of some of the older buildings, so understanding the buildings reinforced concrete or structural steel or the frame or the brace systems, and this required work of going into the san francisco d.b.i. looking at old drawings to pull out the information and bring it forth in the database. now that we have the database, the landscape of the buildings and when they were built. this graphic is showing the 1960s up through the present, when different types of buildings were the constructed. steel frames, and red are various types of buildings. and think about some events that have happened. 1971 san fernando earthquake, one that was a big, raised awareness of the hazard for concrete construction,

nonductile concrete construction. building codes changed subsequently, and buildings built before that were a concern. and many concrete buildings on the landscape, about 3,000 in san francisco, built before that, genuine hazard, only a few of them are in the tall building inventory, but that does not minimize at all the hazard that the nonductile concrete has to people in city that in habit them. another, the 1994 northridge earthquake. vulnerability in the welded column connections due to a host of issues on detail, and toughness and so forth, raising performance of the steel buildings built before that time. and then the third thing that evolved is in the 2000s, modern

performance-based engineering methods came on board, using advanced methods of analysis that allows earthquakes, structural and geo technical engineers to predict the performance of high buildings, and higher levels of performance. inventory is sort of a backdrop to looking at some of the issues, so out of that inventory, three cohorts of buildings that rise up. one as i mentioned, nonductile concrete buildings, 12 out of the 156 in the tall building inventory, but again keep in mind many, many nonductile concrete below 240 that are hazardous. steel moment frame buildings, 86 on the landscape before the northridge earthquake, 65 at the moment resisting frames, raising some questions about what their performance might be in future earthquakes. and finally, the last cohort is looking at the proliferation of tall residential buildings.

about 24 largely reinforced concrete. and we raise these just to sort of think about what issues that can occur in each of the buildings, depending on occupancy, when they were built, type of construction and so forth. and in thinking about why do we focus on tall buildings, obviously these are important structures, large occupancy, but it's not just the effect on the people in the building, whether the safety of them first and foremost, but if there is damage and people are displaced from an office building versus a residential structure. but also how damage can affect its neighbors, in terms of debris after an earthquake, how it can effect emergency evacuation routes and impede buildings around it. if there is a cordon, whether it would restrict access not just to the tall building but buildings in the facility. so we delved into as part of the study. so, out of the study, 16 recommendations. won't review these all, but kind

of four major categories. first is looking at what could be done for new buildings, and one of the recommendations and several of these form the basis of discussion were brought in the mayor's directive, what are some of the important ones to tackle. one of the first ones is looking at the performance and design requirements for tall building foundations, one i think not a topic of the panel discussions but already d.b.i. is working to develop the recommendations that were recommended in this report. one that we will talk about today i think it's a topic somewhat of the first discussion is to think, tall buildings be designed to higher performance levels than other buildings. especially thinking about when the residential occupancy and so forth. so, some recommendation on that, i have a couple of slides to show on that, to kind of queue up that discussion. oops, back for a second. a host of issues on existing building, what could be done

before earthquakes to existing buildings, retrofit, and insurance and that forth. third category, think about what could we anticipate happening after an earthquake, and in terms of evaluation of buildings and in particular, inspection of tall buildings. a lot of the rules and requirements we had for inspecting buildings are sidewalk surveys, walking by a 2 or 3-story building you get a perspective on the performance, but can't do it in the tall building. third session, focus on some of these, thinking what can we do to facilitate inspection of tall buildings after an earthquake, san francisco has the building occupancy resumption program, can that be updated and perhaps made a requirement for tall buildings to facilitate quick recovery. and also safety assessment combined with the different

agencies could come into the city to inspect buildings. that will be a topic of discussion this afternoon or later this morning. and finally, the last group is looking more broadly at seismic risk, and one of those a topic of discussion today is a recommendation to develop a recovery plan for down san francisco that has a lot of tall buildings but intermixed with other buildings and also infrastructure that supports those systems. so to think about anticipating after an earthquake what's associated with recovery and take measures ahead of time to hasten, to expedite things after an earthquake occurs, to bring things back to normal. i would like to briefly talk about one recommendation, enhancing the performance of new tall buildings. we ask the questions what is the expected seismic performance of new tall buildings. building codes keep the buildings safe but might be damage that requires repair and

it could displace people out of the buildings, and can and should the performance be improved. so, a question being raised. partly to inform that, we did a study to look at two buildings, 40-story concrete sheer wall residential building and 40-story modern brace building, buckling restrained braces. what we found, these buildings designed per code, subjected them to a design level earthquake, one that might have a ground shaking probability of exceeding 10% in 50 years, the basis of the spur program, looking at that level of ground shaking, and the building performance in terms of the damage was in line with expectations, recovery time, 5 to 6 months and the steel office building, a little less, 3 to 4 months. but if you think about the resilience of the city apart from the cost of things, it's

the time to recovery that's critical. so, really, discussing these issues that if those are recovery times and talking to engineering professional, they generally agree it's reasonable for what is to expect. some disagreement, will the buildings be able to be occupied, a bigger question, and that's a question that changes over time depending on societal values and stuff on, you know, the safety and the performance of buildings, particularly on tall ones, a whole host of fire and egress issues that are different than low rise buildings. so, part of the study, on the slide on the left, looking at, for those buildings that 5 to 6 months down time, if you will, you know, what part is associated with actually doing the repairs, and here you see on the order of a month or so. but what stretches it out to the 4, 5 months or so-called impeding factors. so, the time to, you know, do inspections of the building, and if there is repair while getting engineers on board to design the repairs, getting permits for the

repairs, contractors, financing and so forth. and one of the recommendations is to look at ways to even if the buildings, we don't go for higher performance of the building per se, what can we do to facilitate through programs, reducing the impeding factor, and the ultimate goal, might not be able to read all the numbers but in the report, being able to reduce those functional recovery times, not changing anything in the building but impeding factors, beyond that is the question of enforcing higher performance standards beyond the basic california building code forgiven that san francisco has a lot of tall buildings in close proximity that serve important functions both for office and for residential. so a quick kind of run through that, appreciate your attention, i think we will move on now to probably the first panel discussion. thank you. [applause]

>> ok. our next panel is a discussion on strengthening building performance. i will be your, the facilitator for this paneling. with us, my first guest is john hooper, who is with the applied technology council, who has been another gentleman who has been right with us from the very beginning, thinking about everything on tall buildings. we have angus mccarthy, the president of the building inspection commission. we have mary ellen carroll, the director of the department of emergency management, and joel coppel, with the planning commission. ok.

so, i'm going to ask a very important question and we are just going to go straight down the line, and let's just get straight to it. what do you think is the most important task we can do to strengthen building performance? >> now i'm on. two areas we could do. i can't do just one. the first one is we could improve the repair time numbers that he showed on the screen earlier, changing how we design tall building, affect that by reducing drips and things like that, one piece. but i think the larger effort could be on those impeding factors to reduce that time, where the majority of the down time comes from. improving the program and things of that nature will facilitate quicker recovery times and getting back in the building. >> so for me, i think because we

at d.m. are responsible for the safety assessment program and the coordination and resourcing for that, my recommendation would be to expand borp as much as we can, we'll learn more about that, in the panel later on. to be able to accelerate reentry and assessment of your buildings, i am a huge advocate for it. >> on behalf of the planning department staff, director, and president melgar, thank everyone for showing up today and let you know that we are extremely concerned with public safety, the safety of our buildings, all over the city especially downtown, and our commission is deeply committed to maintaining the integrity of our built environment. >> obviously i echo the statements made here, i just want to point out we have commissioner clinch here for serious academic questions you

may have, he sits on our engineer and commissioner walker who sits at the tenants. so, thank you for coming here this morning and seeing everybody here this morning. i sit on the builder seat, so we have a very lot of round table discussions, particularly in the building community. with escalating costs and as you know, builders, developers, we complain a lot how are we going to build these things and so on. but one thing as somebody who was in the 1989 earthquake, remembers it very clearly, the aftermath and the damage that was done, so, educating the new development community on how important it is to come up with really strong policies and how we build our tall buildings is probably the most important thing we can do over the next couple of years. >> excellent. and so we saw a presentation by professor deerline. is there anything that really stands out that we should focus

on immediately and then maybe in the long-term, and i'll just let anyone jump out. >> the building stock of tall buildings and the new building design, separate buckets for me. how do we look at the ones that professor deerline mentioned about the cohorts of buildings from the early 1970s to the 1980s to what we do today, and i can they should be looked at and recommendations are included for both, and it's hard to decipher, because we can improve the new buildings incrementally, a small percentage of what we see in the community, but the existing buildings are out there, and vulnerable buildings were mentioned that should have a look see and see if we can't improve their performance as well. >> and so today's, and having everyone here today is very important. existing buildings, a lot we

don't know about, and so maybe angus with building inspection and planning, joel, think about what would we have to do to try and, from a city standpoint with new buildings it's easy, we can just set new regulations and build them according to those building codes. but walk through some of the process of what we have to go through with existing buildings. >> well, i think a lot has happened, the department, d.p.i. is very committed to safety, that's our primary concern, and 1982 and 1983, back to 2008 was introduced, i think that kind of sent out a strong message, we have been on this quite a while. lately, s80 and for those geo tech, geo tech people in the audience is a big ask of the development community, but we are asking for two forms of geo

tech analysis on buildings and so on. so, we are moving as fast as we can. it's kind of on a monthly basis, we seem to come up with new policy and procedures that would be good, obviously it takes time to implement them, but the department of building inspection is doing everything it can to keep on top of changes and involvement on a regular basis, particularly when it comes to tall buildings. >> as far as planning is concerned, we have a pipeline of upcoming tall buildings. recently approving tall buildings and whether it's a commercial or residential or hotel use we take that into consideration just because there might be different safety requirements, not just as the structure of the building need to be built directly, but also the, the systems within the building need to notify people if there is an accident and coming from -- we always work

hand-in-hand with the fire department for our life safety inspections with extra signage, egress routes and emergency lighting to make sure the buildings are safe to be in habited and safe to stand. >> and mary ellen, in thinking about this from your head of the department of emergency management, kind of think about, we, if we have this earthquake, what happens with our down time, down time if the building does not get back up online in a time period, and how does that affect our recovery? >> i think one of my favorite recommendations in the report, even though one of the most daunting, is the downtown recovery report, or study. that we need to do. and what i think about is our downtown has grown and diversified so much recently, it's not just financial and commercial. we have residential, we have more hotels, and so it's so critical that we look at all of

these issues about the performance and then what we are going to do both kind of in the immediate aftermath and then how we recover. some buildings may perform well, but are not going to be accessible because buildings around them have not performed well. and so i think that the -- the other thing is that we have the time frame for potentially getting buildings back online, but i think we need to look a little bit deeper into the, whether those are real or not depending on debris removal that we have to do, lifelines restoration, there's a lot of sort of competing and interdependent factors that go into our recovery. so, this is incredibly important and i'm not the engineer or the technical person, but we all need to work together to make sure that our assessments and

our planning are interdependent, that we are looking at the enter dependensies, and we are doing just that. >> thank you. and while i'm asking questions up here, i would ask you to start writing questions to pass forward so you can ask the panel as soon as we finish here with our conversation. and there's a gentleman in the back, bill barnes, and they will pass out cards if you are interested in asking questions of this panel. other areas that we have been talking about, we have been talking a lot about, especially in downtown san francisco, is the geo technical. we have a lot of structural engineers and i think we have that down. we realized in the last couple

years the geo tech, the foundation, we live in a city that has different types of soils, just within a few block radius. i know angus you talked about the administrative and the sheets, but maybe talk more about what it means and how we think it through going forward and the different processes as a city. >> that was one of the recommendations that professor deerline showed. the process for improving how we do foundation and geo technical engineering is underway. taken that under their wing, and the first draft is available and scrutinized by the full geo technical community, to help raise the bar, if you will, of how geo technical engineering is done, to make sure we are well

founded in the geo technical area here, it can vary greatly on the same city block. and hopefully that will be done and the future of foundation and geo technical engineering will be improved by that effort. >> any other thoughts about that? >> just to conclude, the department is doing very, very good work in that area, and i see my son there, interned here, and ever a job to go after in college is geo technical if you move to san francisco. the biggest challenge i see, we don't have a bigger pool of geo technical. it's a real challenge, as somebody who built the first building in south america in the late 1980s, i learned about the geo technical and the soft, to create a foundation that's going to work in very difficult. and here we are with the tall

buildings again and asking the same from the community. i think they are very, very huge part of us getting this whole thing right, and we need more geo technical engineers, no question about it. the development world, we have a very small pool to go to, and that's something i think is another part of this equation i would love to see more increase in those professional, thank you. >> i wanted to just take a second to thank mayor breed and the leadership she's been providing. we have been recently hearing presentations, there are climate change issues to make the buildings more energy efficient downtown, but at least having the discussions on a public level to help us gain knowledge and know more for the future. >> excellent. so, some of the questions i've gotten from the audience and we can talk about is where is the u.s. geological survey in this

conversation, and what is being done about the continued areas -- mission bay, embarcadero. u.s. geological survey, i know the office of resilience and capital planning has regular conversations with them, and part of our conversation, not just here on tall buildings, but in the earthquake safety implementation program, and we are very much involved in our retrofit conversations and our -- we are working with them on a regular basis. as for like our continued areas of liquifaction, downtown is now growing and people now consider mission bay downtown, and so i just, even watching the warriors

games, the last game in oakland and moving to downtown san francisco, i'm like that's not downtown, that's mission bay. but they now said over and over the last couple of weeks. so, we have had conversations, i know mary ellen was the first one to bring this up. i don't know if you want to have thoughts how we take this work. do we focus right now, scale it around, scale it to other neighborhoods, what are your thoughts around this? >> liquifaction or in general. >> both. >> we have done a lot of great work in planning around our response. the immediate response. but really looking at a recovery discussion and i'm so happy to say that we are just on the precipice of kicking that off. also because that discussion goes well beyond the city. we have, and that's why you are

all here. we are only 30,000 strong, and we have really got to get everybody involved in this conversation. we want to understand what you need to know from us, what your assumptions and expectations are. it will -- it will fire us and force us to really dig into, more into some of these discussions. for me, i think the issue of lifelines, and looking at lori johnson and other people here who have done a lot of work on this, really our ability to get in, back into the city and to work is so critical, and so moving through the steps of response and recovery, putting these in some sort of order, because as i mentioned before, you can't do building assessments if you can't get through the streets necessarily, although drones are an option. there are some options. but you can't house hundreds of

engineers, geo technical, civil or structural if you don't have a place for them to stay and power and water. so, so i think this discussion, it's global and we have to look at each section of our city, both as a whole, but separately also. so, those are the things that i'm thinking about, and really looking forward to that i think we are going to make a lot of progress in this recovery plan on. >> recently this question came in and we talked about it, there was a recent "new york times" article about the use of base isolator, which san francisco city hall is on base isolators. and japan uses them a lot more, and the "new york times" articles that california is not using them as much and should san francisco be looking into that approach, too. i like to think, since san francisco city hall is on base eye isolators we are thinking

about it here in the city of st. francis. any thoughts from the panel? >> a nice job painting what the issues are, and most engineers on a project will offer that as an option to the owners. it's not all always taken mainly because of the challenge and the cost associated with them, and so that's the impediment here on the west coast that's different than we see in japan, uses it a lot more. tall building inventory, isolators are not as effective because of the nature of how those buildings perform naturally. it's a better fit for buildings like this that are, you know, robust and strong and stiff, and so that's a better play for that. but certainly we could do more, especially for those buildings that want to be essential facility basis, like hospitals and emergency operations centers, etc., where they are best implemented and get the performance we really need out

of those structures. >> i have some good questions here about even if the tall buildings survive, and goes to the interdependency issues, and pointing to lori johnson who did the study, what about the streets. what about the infrastructure around the streets. what about even if my office is open, will i have daycare, what is all the recovery issues, and so we have a lot of thoughts about that. mary ellen, you want to jump in, angus, all of you, i think a good one to think about how we are all interdependent upon each other, our streets, our roads, the economic recovery, i can't get to work if the train system is down, i can't get to work if i have no place to send my kids and family. so -- >> from the beginning, one of the things i think about especially downtown, getting people out of dodge, right? so if it happens during the week and we have hundreds and thousands of visitors and people

that work here who need to get across the day or on a plane and to their family, their homes, that's sort of the initial, and that's a huge lift right there. again, the conversation has to be multidisciplinary. this tall building study i think is so unique and innovative, it's really diving into the complex technical issues that is pushing these other questions. and again, we have a number of different initiatives, we have our emergency response initiative that responses and plans that the department of public -- d.m. is responsible for. like a 400-page debris removal plan but then we have life lines and now this, and the connection that i feel that has been missing has been to the broader community, to our residents, to

our businesses, to really bring you all into this discussion. we are all going to be affected. we want to keep, we want you to stay in san francisco or if you have to leave, we want to bring you back as quickly as possible and the late mayor ed lee rings in my head all the time. a year and a half -- shortly before he passed away we were in a meeting and said this is my legacy, and it is, it's all of ours to come together and we are finally there. at such a good time. so, the beginning of discussions and the real work that's going to bring us together to find the solutions we need. >> and thank you for mentioning the late mayor ed lee. this is all, this culmination of the work product he started when he was mayor and he truly cared about life lines council, restoration timelines, recovery effort. the tall building strategy. he asked that we do this, and so

thank you for mentioning the late mayor ed lee. ok. next topic. what about buildings like 181 fremont that went above code. why can't we ask all buildings to go above code? what are the barriers and what are the costs? i know that gets very technical quickly, but at a high level, and i know there is a lot of technical people in the audience to answer that in detail, but this panel's thoughts. >> there are requirements in the san francisco building code and in the administrative bulletin 83 that caused those things to happen. so, hats off to d.b.i. again for that. any building over 240 foot height limit that you want to take a code exception to, something outside the building code, mainly make it taller, then the code might allow, requires us to do more

sophisticated analysis or sophisticated design, and with that comes a peer review panel that helps oversee what we do to make sure the engineer is doing it as best they can. that includes people like professor deerline and other academics to help make sure we are getting it right. it's a natural cause of doing that process that makes, i would argue, safer than the code prescriptive design, that does not have the layer of goodness, if you will. there is a cost to that, though, like you mentioned. cost is not exorbitant, i don't think, so the question, how many buildings? what buildings are important to take on this additional level of design and oversight and review? that's a discussion that should be had by the city and the developers and the owners, etc., to see if that cost would be worth it. >> as a builder and developer, my projects have never met that

criteria. and at the end of the process they are happy. the two i did talk to, they can now go to the world and say i have one of the finest buildings this side of america, and i think that's a huge thing for people in the world of selling product and buildings and see it now in the advertisements, and they go out of the way to talk about the structural issues and how the building was built, and some of them say -- it's interesting. so i think the developing world is embracing the extra work peer reviews and so on, and are using that to tell the world that they are, you know, moving into one of the most solid buildings built that can be done in this day. so -- >> when it comes to codes, you have to remember that codes are the bare minimum.

we are always going to encourage people to overbuild things. we can't make them, but being in this city, this is the city to overbuild something for longevity, and you know, if we are not going to ding you if you don't overbuild it but encourage you to. >> i want to add one thing, not really on the agenda so i'm going off a little bit. but we are going to talk about the council on friday, but dealing with climate change issues. we are talking about seismic here, but actually, truly believe that climate is going to be just, you can guarantee that that's coming, actually has already arrived, and so that's another area that i think as a city we need to be looking forward to making sure that our buildings are habitable for a different kind of climate than we are used to. >> thank you for that, especially since we had a very

hot, hot, hot week last week, and we are struggling looking for cooling centers and air-conditioning and places for folks who live in san francisco who don't have air-conditioning and where to go. here is a good question. why is borp not known among the architectural and engineering firms and building owners? what can we do to get borp in the state safety assessment program more publicity, get more folks certified as inspectors, get our buildings -- this is all part of recovery. >> right now borp is a voluntary program and people opt in, and the owners are deciding we want to recover faster, have their engineer be accessible after a major event to get the building back online. one of the initiatives is require that for buildings of a

certain height or criteria, and that would publicize it. engineers know about it, the architects less so, and a handful of owner types do but it's out there, and certainly they know about it, and we need to get the word out and maybe make it required for certain buildings and set the criteria what the buildings are. >> i second everything said there. for me, learning about borp, only the last year and a half that i got educated. i did not know et existed. and my reaction, if i own one of these buildings, these tall buildings, why would i not have this? >> test test test test test test test test test test testn test test test test. brainer. i know might be added cost, but

the overall result that you get from it after a crisis i think is just, you can't put a number on that. i'm totally in favor of that. >> s.a.p., safety assessment panel today, and it will make you want to look into borp, i think. >> ok. thank you. all right. you know, a lot more on like lifelines and the most important life lines. getting a lot of questions like what are we doing to harden and strengthen our infrastructure around buildings, a lot of that is public. we have a ten-year capitol plan we are looking at like our water, wastewater, streets. but also i think we learned a lot about this, looking at christchurch, new zealand, the shattering of glass after an earthquake and how are we thinking of that, too. >> i'll talk about it on the tall building side. all the tall buildings that have

been designed since about the mid 2000s, the gladding design is enhanced for the code for a standard building. we thought about that, and so the cladding, including the gra glass, we hope is more resilient, so put that into the tall bls, so we are doing better because of that. and did not need the lessons from christchurch, that was thought about almost 15 years ago, so we are doing better because of the rules in place since about mid 2000s. >> again, really happy we are having this discussion today. i think boma is doing a good job leading the way, setting themselves up to succeed if and when something like this does happen, i see a lot of building owners and managers here today and a lot of the buildings are existing and older historic buildings, and i just want to, you know, make sure that they

have time to implement these processes, whether it be windows or whatnot, the owners will need time to fix their buildings and make them more healthy for the future. >> all right. so, there was a lot more questions that came in, i could not read the handwriting or very technical, a lot on a lot of d.b.i. codes and whatnot, i want to point out the d.b.i. team here today, if you have more questions, they are all sitting down, at this table right here. [laughter] please come over and ask us questions, but i have a very important one, the reason why we are here today, and would like everyone to talk about this. what we don't want to do is, you see a lot of recommendations and 16 recommendations that our best educated, highly educated learn ed thoughts, with you don't want

to do it without the input from the stakeholders, and so one of the questions i thought would be great we end on, how would you help to inform the planning department, department of building inspections, board of supervisors, to implement policies based on facts and data. there's a fear of some new policies that only serve short-term political agenda, that's not what we want to do today and that's why we are here to have these conversations. so, from, you got the building inspection, the planning department, emergency management and applied technology council, and academic experts. so, please, would you respond? >> again, i want to thank our department. we have a robust department that's constantly working, doing a lot of the legwork for us, addressing these very issues. we see just the tip of the iceberg on thursdays when we hear these items as a commission, but i'm very confident that staff is working

with all different departments throughout the city and the mayor's office to ensure that we are looking at improving the healthiest buildings we can. >> that's all with a very loaded question. as a builder/developer again, i keep wearing that hat, we are all trying to do the right thing and to the departments, particularly in d.b.i., we get a lot of great ideas but honestly, a lot of bad ideas, too. and we entertain the bad with the good, and we try and do our best to process. the only time the consequences are something we talk about in the commission, particularly when we have so much from planning and what they are asking and how it works with our code here. and we are always asking ourself, so the best answer i can give, everything is really hashed over. so, if policy, or, is changed and if the code changes, we like to believe it's for the better, an