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The Department of Buildings is easing requirements for façade examinations — conducted to check for loose materials that could fall due to weather and disrepair — of high-rise buildings.

As a result, building owners may now forgo “critical” exams for structures 8 stories and higher that have been deemed safe by past inspections. Such buildings will be allowed to submit reports for ongoing and less extensive inspections, called as “short form only” programs by the city.

The revisions, implemented by Department of Buildings Commissioner Richard Monocchio, were not voted on by the city council, and went into effect Oct. 22.

Unlike the critical examinations, which require inspectors to conduct close-up review using scaffolding and “invasive” techniques to assess the safety of a building’s exterior, short-form inspections are limited to visual examinations, performed at ground level with binoculars.

Department of Buildings spokesperson Bill McCaffrey said the city was not putting the cost of inspections, which must be shouldered by condo associations and building owners, ahead of safety.

“We feel that these buildings will be safe as long as they undergo these inspections as outlined in the new rules and regulations,” he said.

McCaffrey noted that identified exterior flaws in short-form reports would immediately be subjected to more thorough examination.

With fees for scaffolding contractors, architects and engineers wrapped up in the hands-on inspections, the visual surveys may come as an attractive alternative for building owners.

Costs for the critical examinations range widely, from $5,000 to six figure totals, according to estimates from a principal at one engineering firm.

The penalties that come with not filing a report or neglecting to maintain an exterior wall are also steep, with fines set at $1,000 to $2,500 a day, per offense.

Added language states that owners of newly constructed buildings may begin the short-form program without an initial critical examination “provided that dangerous and hazardous conditions have not been discovered on the building.”

Designed to implement the city’s Façade Inspection Ordinance, the previous rules and regulations had been in effect since 1996. Prior to the recent amendment, critical inspections of qualifying building were due at four-, eight- and twelve-year intervals, with short form reports required every year.

Originally drafted in 1978, Chicago’s façade ordinance is the oldest and arguably the most comprehensive of its kind in the country.

The ordinance was prompted in 1974 when a pedestrian was killed by two pieces of cornice tile that fell from the sixteenth floor of a building on West Madison Street, according a 2004 history of Chicago’s façade ordinance written by Ian Chin and Holly Gerberding.

Shortly after that tragedy, city staffers visually inspected 2,458 buildings in Chicago and found that nearly half of the buildings exhibited “loose and potentially unsafe building material.”

Based on this study, the city enacted an ordinance requiring buildings five stories and higher undergo close-up façade examinations every 10 years, with buildings more than 35 years old requiring examinations every five years.

Few building owners complied with the ordinance at the time, and the city repealed the law a year later, Chin and Gerberding’s history says. A similar ordinance, drawn up in 1981, was reviewed and tabled by city council members.

The issue of façade inspections in Chicago remained dormant until 1994, when three separate, victimless incidents of falling building materials occurred in the span of a month.

The city then took a renewed interest in the façade ordinance, enlisting the Chicago Committee on High Rise Buildings to assist in preparing recommendations for new rules on façade examinations. From these recommendations, which stressed the need for critical and on-going inspections, the city adopted an ordinance in 1996.

Additional amendments to the ordinance followed, spurred largely by further façade collapses resulting in fatalities and property damages. By 2004, 70 percent of the city’s eligible buildings were in compliance with the law. Since the inception of the façade ordinance, nearly every major city in the country has passed similar building inspection laws.

The ordinance as it stands today focuses on buildings constructed with high-risk materials like carbon steel, uncoated bars and other corrodible metals.

Also on the list for potential façade collapse are buildings constructed with terracotta, a clay-based ceramic that can be seen in the ornate designs decorating the Wrigley and the Marquette buildings downtown, for example. In the revisions of the rules and regulations, language directing requirements for thorough inspections of terracotta structures was deleted.

While the city promises to keep safety a top priority, some on the engineering side say that relaxing the rules will lead to bigger problems down the line.

Steven Elver, president of the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois, broke it down to a matter of hygiene.

“If you’re not going to the dentist as much, what’s that going to lead to?” he asked. “Not only do you have more cavities, but each one is much larger.”

Elver’s organization was one of a handful that sent comments to the city during the public comment period requesting that the proposed changes be turned down.

“SEAOI believes that this decision is shortsighted, will result in long-term problems, create higher deferred cost and is not in the interest of public safety,” Elver wrote in a Sept. 22 letter. In it, he underlined the importance of close-up examination techniques, such as “hammer sounding,” for locating distresses in the buildings that would be undetectable by visual examinations.

For building owners, the new rules and regulations seem like a clear win, especially for their wallets.

All the same, building owners are approaching the revisions with cautious optimism, said Dan Hess, president of biggestblock.com, a networking site for condo and co-op owners.

“Conceptually, it seems great,” said Hess, who also owns a condo, “but I think there needs to be better understanding of how it will work in practice.”

Hess said that the financial perks are enticing, as the façade code is one of many security measures, such as the life-safety and elevator ordinances, that push expenses onto building owners in the city.

But public safety is still paramount.

“Most rational people would say it’s important to make sure that our buildings are safe and not crumbling,” Hess said.

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