Many people in the real estate and construction communities are familiar with HPO 3rd party warranty requirements for newly constructed homes as legislated by the Homeowner Protection Act.  The “2-5-10” new home warranty is what we expect to see when any new home hits the market.

However, there often can be some dispute over how the Act applies to existing buildings undergoing renovations or changes of use.  The HPO refers to “Substantially Reconstructed Homes” as the tipping point to where a renovation to an existing house crosses the threshold to where it is effectively considered a new house and thus requiring enrollment in the warranty program.  Below is a link to an informative article which outlines the criteria for where this threshold is met.  This may serve as a good reminder for many, but you also may be surprised what type of renovation constitutes a new build in the eyes of the HPO.  There are many other anomalies that trigger the requirements as well:

A great example is a heritage conversion.  We are involved with a house constructed over 100 years ago as a single family residence, and converted to 8 “light housekeeping units” in the 80’s (housekeeping units are individual rooms that share kitchen and bathroom facilities).  At current, the current project proposes to convert the house to 4 self contained dwelling units as a non-stratified 4-plex.  While the previous use allowed for 8 housekeeping suites, they are not considered as ‘dwelling units’ and thus our conversion from 8 housekeeping units to 4 dwelling units was actually considered as an increase in the number of units in the building.  Once a project increases the number of dwelling units it is treated as a new house.

So, we have an over 100 year old house where we are not touching the exterior shell at all, and it is considered a ‘new house’ with the HPO.  Obviously the concern is instances where heritage conversions are stratified, and the units sold off (not the case for us), but still an interesting example of what is considered a new build!

http://www.hpo.bc.ca/files/download/Report/Substantial_Reconstruction_Homes.pdf  

In a time when many municipalities are encouraging (or even requiring) ‘green’ features to be included in single family dwelling building project, it’s time to challenge the same muni’s to ‘green’ up their own building permit review process.

If muni’s are going to take it upon themselves to require ‘green’ building practices that exceed any building code requirement, then we the customer can be critical of their own lack of green practice.

Not to pick on the largest of our 13 CRD municipalities that will remain nameless, but let’s look at an example:

Say we are applying for a building permit for a new single family custom home.  A complete and comprehensive set of plans for this particular home is 18 sheets of paper, 24″ x 36″.  That’s 108sf of paper for one set of drawings.

This particular municipality requires we submit 5 sets of these drawings for a building permit application.  FIVE. Thats 540sf of paper for one permit submission, for one house.  Aside from the $0.25 / SF cost of $135) that is just a plain excessive amount of paper.

I can appreciate the need for simultaneous review, but at the same time it is a bit excessive for departments such as Parks to receive 18 sheets of paper so they can review 1.

Now, in the complex and highly interpretive code and zoning language era we live in, what happens when the muni responds to the initial submission with a request for more information or clarification.  Rinse and repeat.  RE-SUBMIT 5 SETS.

It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but there are far better and more efficient ways to facilitate this process in a digital workflow.  Digital document submissions would allow for any degree of simultaneous review desired, and an organized, supervised collaboration of comments within typically very segregated departments.  The process would be sped up for all parties considerably, the cost reduced for the Home Owner, and the muni is not left with the burden of thousands of sheets of paper.  Furthermore, having digital records of all past permit submissions streamlines future processes.

Leading firms in Architecture, Engineering and Design have utilized this digital workflow for years using PDF review and collaboration software such as Bluebeam (http://www.bluebeam.com/)

It`s time for Local Government to get on board.