At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) closed their permit counters to the public. Since then, we began providing online options for applicants to engage with our teams, but we know there are opportunities for improvement! With new public health guidance, we are making plans to offer in-person services again and we’d like to hear from you.
Fire walls are the most robust form of fire-rated assemblies in the Building Code and have strict rules for their construction and continuity. In Seattle, fire walls are being used more frequently for a variety of reasons, including: Fire walls are required for compartmentalization when building 6 stories of wood construction using the Seattle amendment to promote more affordable housing (SBC 510.10); and Fire walls are used to subdivide a building into separate “buildings,” either to change the occupancy designation or to separate new construction from existing.
With the onset of the rainy season, SDCI is reminding builders working in Seattle to inspect and maintain any temporary storm drain inserts they have installed as part of construction projects. The inserts, also known as storm drain socks, are used on many construction projects to catch sediment not captured by other required construction-related erosion control measures.
We updated Tips on tree code, mechanical permits, and registering rental property and published two new Tips about tree requirements. We published the final Director’s Rule on implementing the 2023 fee subtitle.
Once again, SDCI will be hosting a hybrid version of our popular Seattle Home Fair in January and February. These free events will be jam-packed with useful information about rental housing rules, our permitting and inspection process, emergency preparedness, and much more. We’ll be back in-person at the Filipino Community Center on February 25, 2023 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Additionally, there will be 5 virtual lectures on 3 Saturdays leading up to the event at the Filipino Community Center.
On January 1, 2023, SDCI will be implementing a compounded inflationary increase of 9.16% to most fees. This increase follows two consecutive years in which SDCI did not implement fee increases, and is designed to re-align SDCI fee levels with the current cost of business. These fee increases will result in an SDCI base hourly rate of $252/hr, and Land Use hourly rate of $430/hr.
We are now accepting code change proposals as part of the update of the Seattle Construction Codes from the 2018 to the 2021 code editions. Anyone proposing a code change for the building, residential, mechanical, fuel gas, existing building, and plumbing codes is encouraged to do so by January 1, 2023. SDCI and the Construction Codes Advisory Board will review these proposals and any staff-proposed code changes for potential inclusion in the new codes beginning in January 2023.
Passionate about design or architecture? Mayor Bruce Harrell is looking for qualified candidates to fill 22 upcoming openings on the City of Seattle’s Design Review Boards. Board members evaluate the design of new buildings based on citywide and neighborhood-specific design guidelines. The boards review large mixed-use developments, multifamily housing, and commercial projects. The volunteer positions will start on April 4, 2023, when retiring board members’ terms expire.
In January 2022, SDCI transitioned to providing plan reviews via plan mark-up instead of traditional letters. This Building Connections article serves as a resources refresher for applicants responding to review comments. The primary change that we are asking of applicants is that they document responses to comments directly in the plan set provided to them by SDCI at the end of each review cycle instead of sending response letters corresponding to each correction letter. (Note: You will still receive correction summaries from individual reviews as they are completed.)
SDCI has added in-language assistance to our Virtual Applicant Services Center for customers who prefer to conduct business in Spanish, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. Our live chat, support ticketing system, and coaching sessions are now available in these three languages. You can access these services by clicking the green chat icon on the bottom of our contact webpage and selecting your preferred language. If you know somebody who might be interested in using our in-language Virtual Applicant Services Center, please forward this information.
