A workflow developed in collaboration with Donald Zhao,
Plan Review Engineer and Interim Building Official
Our Code Compliance series features perspectives from industry leaders.
ABOUT
San Luis Obispo
INDUSTRY
Municipal Building
Code Enforcement
RESULTS
Yeah, my name is Donald Zhao. I'm with West Coast Co Consultants. I'm a Plan review Engineer, Vice President, and also Interim Billing Official.
And one thing I like to tell people – we like to solve problems. And the harder the problem, the more we get to dig in and figure out how to help the design team move a project forward. There's a lot of things everyone needs to know. I mean, the building code used to be a pocket-sized book. Now it's 7-9 volumes, actually.
Three foot deep, right? And having that kind of requirement – it's quite the challenge. And so, to help navigate through those, get these projects approved – I think that's what I've been called to do.
Why do you like those – I think you called them like complex puzzles before. What do you love about those?
The company's an engineering background. I'm – I'm myself an engineer, and we are trained to do problem solving.
Projects that come every so often that have a particular uniqueness to the project – these projects sometimes need to be built a certain way without the code magic, without the way to figure out hey, this is how the code really, really talks about things. This is the intent of the code. Without that assistance, sometimes these projects don't – don't make it. And so, being able to be part of these projects that are not – they don't fit the regular box – is pretty interesting. It's pretty cool.
Oh, love it. So I'm curious in that space – like you mentioned in the past, you know it used to just be the single book, now there's so many volumes, this great degree of complexity.
From your perspective, what are some of the fundamental challenges that exist in construction today? Like, what's holding us – what's holding us back from, like, as a country, being able to achieve our construction goals today?
If you look at the code book, each code section has a reason there. And trying to delete some of it may be helpful, but the majority of those have been added for particular reason.
Our building science has become more sophisticated. What we know now versus back at the first UBC – it's 1927 – what we knew then versus now is completely different. And so, if you look at where other countries have – like I remember Hades – they had a major earthquake. Hundreds of thousands of people died, right? And it's a what, 6 or 7 on the Richter scale earthquake.
But we get it here on the regular. And we get non-structural damages. Sometimes we get structural damage, but the fatality level isn't that dramatic. And so that's the result of codes improving over time.
But that adds on the layer of complexity, right? So how do we navigate that? So that's – that's the challenge we deal with.
Yeah. Would you say that today, without AI, humans are set up to navigate that well?
It's not. Our industry – so the ones with plan review, inspections, building officials, fire officials, – we have a challenge of talent.
Our industry is aging. People are retiring and we gotta figure out how to bring in new talent.
If we want more housing, if we want more buildings, we need more people in our industry. AI can inject knowledge faster than the old way of training people. When I was learning a few of these things – electrical systems is hard, it's one of the hardest subjects – if you don't have someone there to help you, your learning curve is very long. A standard plan checker don't get proficient within 6 months. It takes them about 3 years. And it's still a lifelong learning process – you never stop learning in our industry, and that's a beautiful thing.
But I know with AI getting better, it's gonna narrow down that starting point to take me through an entire journey of "Hey, how does electricity work?" And then it's like, "Hey, here's a single line diagram."
How does this work? Is it wired right? Is the conductor size right? Is the loading right? It can provide feedback. And and the beautiful thing – if it can do it for a plan checker, it sure can do it for the contractor.
Yeah. So tell us about your day-to-day use of AI.
I have many roles that I play throughout the day. Sometimes I'm doing building official duties, sometimes I'm doing plan check, sometimes I'm doing inspections. I find it really cool with the inspection process – I get to take the AI into the field. And what's really nice about it – it helps me with the communication. And hopefully, with the proper communication and education, we have a higher chance of compliance.
Comes up with the code section. Oh, you don't speak – you can't read – read English? Oh, let me just translate it into a language you can read. And that communication with the code section A educates them so that they can see, hey, this is not just some guy who tells you what to do. You have a code section. Because once they read it, and once they see that's a code, I would hope that they would remember it for future instances.
And part of being successful in a community is working with the builders. Collaborating, educating them, because they're relying on us to give them that knowledge. And this is what Ichi would do. Before Ichi and AI – what do we have to do?
Inspectors would carry the entire library of codes, or they have these cheat sheets that they share with the contractor. A lot of the issues I've ever dealt with were arguments between the contractor and the inspector – "Is it in code?". When AI generates a code section, and if it's correct, it helps them and it removes a lot of the resistance to compliance.
Communication is a challenge in our industry. So it's important for us to sit down and write what's in our head in a comprehensive or comprehendible manner so that the audience – who's a designer or homeowner or even anyone else who wants to read it – is like "Okay, this is what you're trying to say."
This is what deficiencies there are, and this is what I need to do with it. So, that communication – how that gets written – takes time. 30 minutes of identifying the deficiencies, 3 hours writing it. Now, with AI – I had the experience earlier this week where I was actually focused on plan check. 4 hours focused – that would have been an 8-hour review. This was 10 small projects that one of our cities needed.
And each part of the process – I'm no longer trying to figure out how do I structure a comment so the other side can understand. AI comes up with "Please update your address for this project. Here's the code section." I was like "Beautiful!". That's been the case throughout the entire 4 hours.
And that's how I'm able to reduce so much time is – you have an AI who's structuring comments, and if you give it more context, it gives you a better output. All those mundane processes that doesn't really add value would disappear. The plan checkers are gonna focus on what really matters to a project. I'm not gonna have to worry "Hey, is the plan for this address correct? Is the scope of work matching the permit application?"
All those – AI can handle. What would matter to me? "Hey, is this structurally sound? Did you design the beams correctly? Is the lateral system correct? Do I have proper way of getting out of the building?" Instead of getting into, "Oh your spelling's wrong. Oh your address is wrong." Those those are important – but let the computer handle it. Let the AI do it.
As I understand, like 5 new people you just hired – you're using AI to help accelerate their education. How much faster do you think it will be?
Typically, it takes about 3 years to get them fully ramped up and independent. I think even looking in the realm of 3–6 months to where they can start doing production work. If we structure AI to be your tutor – oh man – I mean, you can probably just start there and go.
And I can imagine 5–10 years from now, you could train somebody who's like, "Hey, tell me what I need to do" looking at this plan. And you got this AI coming in and it's like, "Hey, start here, start here" and you have your run of a checklist. You're going to be the one that's supervising it.
You make some common sense out of it. You can also educate the designers and the builders. Before the inspector shows up, the contractor takes a picture and says, "Hey, did I install this right? Did I install this per plan?"
That would reduce the time that we need to go and check everything. They have a higher success or higher chance of passing an inspection. So it's not just plan checkers – it's industry-wide – where it will speed up the production time of construction.
Where do you see AI going in the next five to ten years? How will it change your industry?
I mean, the product that you have here – oof – it's going to change the world!
