That the City Council approve and authorize the City Manager to enter into two, three-year agreements with True North Compliance Services and Transtech Engineers, Inc to provide professional on-call building plan check, grading plan check and building inspection services on an as-needed basis. 

The City's Building Safety and Code Enforcement Division ("Division") is responsible for the review of construction plans and, once approved, the inspection of permitted work. The Division currently uses a combination of full-time in-house staff and contract consultants on an as-needed basis for plan checks and inspection services. The City has utilized contracts for these types of services with True North Compliance Services ("True North"), Transtech Engineers, Inc ("Transtech") and VCA Code since 2023. All three contracts are set to expire in June 2026; therefore, in April 2026, staff released a Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit proposals from companies who provide these types of services. After reviewing 15 proposals that were submitted in response to the RFP, staff is recommending establishing new professional services agreements for this type of work with True North and Transtech. 

The City has a practice of utilizing outside consulting services to review most building plan checks. While some plan checks are conducted by in-house staff, the City does not currently employ a Plans Examiner, so most plan checks are assigned to qualified outside firms for review. These outside specialists perform building and grading plan checks for various residential, commercial, and industrial projects. Outsourcing these projects supports the City's goals of providing timely and quality customer service by meeting deadlines for projects and by providing professional technical building expertise to homeowners, businesses, and developers. The goal is to provide efficient, accurate, and timely plan check turnarounds within 10 business days in order to offer a streamlined permit issuance process. 

The outsourcing of building inspection services is temporarily necessary due to current staffing vacancies in the Division. Building inspections are performed by three positions in the Division: the Building Inspector, Senior Building Inspector and Chief Building Official (CBO). The Building Inspector position is currently filled by a city employee; however, the Senior Building Inspector position has been vacant since August 1, 2024. The City has unsuccessfully recruited for this position two times and is currently in a third recruitment cycle. A contract employee from True North is currently filling this position on an as-needed basis. The CBO position has been vacant since the former CBO was on leave and subsequently separated from the City in January 2026. Recruitment for the CBO position closed on March 17, 2026, and a conditional offer has been made to, and accepted by, the top candidate to fill this position. 

The City receives an average of 30 building inspection requests per day and maintains a goal of performing inspections within 24 hours of a request. The average volume of 15 inspections assigned to each staff inspector generally allows for adequate time to perform these inspections. To respond to this demand and the expected level of customer service, it is sometimes necessary to retain an outside contract inspector to assist with inspections that city staff has not been certified to perform or when additional temporary staffing is necessary. Both of which are the case with the vacant Senior Building Inspector and CBO positions.

Without these critical contract services, the absence of qualified personnel would significantly impact the City's ability to process local development projects, as complex commercial plan checks and specialized structural reviews could not be legally performed. Furthermore, residents and local business owners would face significant delays in securing routine plan reviews and required construction inspections. 

With the City's existing consulting services agreements with True North, Transtech, and VCA Code set to expire at the end of the current fiscal year, staff released an RFP to solicit proposals from interested consulting firms who provide building and safety services. The City received 15 qualified proposals and each was evaluated by staff, with two chosen as the top firms that best meet the needs of the City. Having two firms available on an on-call basis will provide flexibility and sufficient support to ensure that plan checks and inspections are occurring on schedule. 

The proposals were evaluated based on the qualifications of the firm, versatility in plan check specialty, and the fee proposal. Based on these criteria, True North and Transtech Engineers were deemed the most suitable choices due to their competitive hourly rates, versatility in plan check specialty, and review turnaround time. The City has been utilizing services from True North and Transtech and staff have indicated that their work product and responsiveness has been satisfactory. Staff also contacted references for the firms, who similarly indicated satisfaction with the services provided by the companies. 

Based on the results of the evaluations, staff recommends that the City Council approve and authorize the City Manager to enter into three-year agreements with both True North and Transtech to provide professional building plan check, grading plan check, and building inspection services on an as-needed basis. The City Attorney's office has reviewed the attached agreements. 

The costs for contract building and grading plan check and building inspection services will vary depending on the frequency that the services are utilized. As noted above, both True North and Transtech charge the City based on a percentage of the plan check fee that the City collects from private developers and property owners. The hourly rates associated with inspection services are paid for from revenues associated with the issuance of building permits. In addition, the Division also issues and inspects building permits for City projects. These costs are absorbed by the Division. The Department has budgeted $273,000 for contract building and grading plan check and building inspection services in the Fiscal Year 2026/2027 proposed municipal budget.