In One Seattle, every person deserves to have a safe and affordable place to call home – this is critical to our efforts to create a safe, welcoming, and thriving Seattle of the future. Now more than ever, we must advance bold action to address the housing affordability and homelessness crises by helping people move indoors with access to services and preventing homelessness in the first place.
SDCI has updated three Tips, published draft Director’s Rules about relocation assistance payments, and finalized a director’s rule about frequent transit service areas.
SDCI’s inspections team inspects a wide range of items on development projects. They inspect the basic “concrete, boards, and nails” of a project and more specific disciplines such as electrical, mechanical, conveyance, boilers, and earthwork-related efforts. In 1999, SDCI created the Site Development Inspections team to perform Pre-Application Site Visits, monitor erosion control, and do field follow-up of geotechnical special inspections.
SDCI and Washington state update their adopted construction codes every three years. The current updates creating the 2021 series of codes for SDCI and Washington state where slated to be adopted and implemented by July 1, 2023. However, SDCI’s proposed updates will be delayed. The 2021 Seattle Construction Codes effective date of July 1, 2023 is delayed to no sooner than Monday, October 2, 2023 to accommodate a City of Seattle legislative review process which is longer than anticipated this code cycle.
Join SDCI on May 20 for two virtual presentations aimed to help you make your home a little safer. Mayor Bruce Harrell has proclaimed May 2023 to be Building Safety Month in support of a national celebration of building safety sponsored by the International Code Council. As part of Building Safety Month, and in collaboration with the One Seattle Day of Service, SDCI is hosting two online presentations to help you be more prepared for the unexpected.
In April, 2022 the City of Seattle passed regulations to help protect our urban canopy. Those regulations require tree service providers to register with the City of Seattle before conducting commercial tree work, consultations on private property and posting a public notice on-site for any tree work beyond minimal routine maintenance. In February 2023, the City passed additional legislation to modify and clarify those regulations. See the SDCI tree code webpage for the detailed registration and notice requirements.
Thank you to everybody who attended our Seattle Home Fair sessions in January and February. We were happy that so many of you were able to join us. If you missed the Seattle Home Fairs, or want to watch a different session, the recordings, presentations, and resources are now available on our Seattle Home Fairs webpage.
SDCI is excited to announce the upcoming release of the new Smoke Control Acceptance test form. This form will be a required item for final on all projects with Smoke Control systems that don’t have a requirement for a Special Inspector for Smoke Control assigned to them. The new form will replace all existing “white papers” and will provide consistency and reliability to our customers. The form will be available on the SDCI Forms page on March 15. This form will be required for all systems tested on or after April 1, 2023.
SDCI standard process is to cancel permit applications that are more than 24 months old to ensure projects are meeting current standards. When an applicant submits an application, they are locked into (“vested to”) the codes current at that time. If an application is not issued within 24 months, it has the potential of becoming out of date with updated life safety codes, energy requirements, land use regulations, etc. It is important that applications are issued in a timely manner so that the projects are built to modern codes. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mayor issued an emergency order that resulted in SDCI suspending its process of cancelling applications older than 24 months. That emergency order ended in October 2022. SDCI will now resume cancelling old applications. SDCI will send notifications to affected applicants in the coming months outlining the timeframe in which permits must be obtained or be subject to application cancellation.
In February, SDCI updated three Tips on Mandatory Housing Affordability, factory-assembled structures, and build-over approval process.
