A Day in the Life of a Building Inspector

While not all building departments are run the same way, I thought I would give everyone a quick rundown on how a typical day for me goes.

For myself, a huge benefit of the job is the freedom and the ability to be outside and away from offices and meetings. Getting to be on job sites with good, hard-working people is an honor and a privilege. I try to think of my position as someone who is providing a service and my job is to help homeowners and contractors get to the finish line with a final product that is safe for themselves, friends, family and the public.

My typical day starts off by taking care of phone messages with inspection requests and people asking code-related questions about their projects. Where I work, we do same-day inspections and allow for inspection requests for that day only until 8:30am. I have seen other cities and counties that require 1 or more days notice in order to get on the schedule, but for us, people call the same day that they are ready for their inspection.

At 8:30am, I compile all of my inspection requests that I have written up and scheduled in our scheduling program and establish the route for my day. Due to the new world of COVID, we are not required to go into the office to take off calls anymore. It’s all done from our work cell phones at home or in our cars. This has been a great change as it now allows me to spend a little more time with my family in the morning, but I also do miss that the inspection group doesn’t get to spend much face to face time together discussing different project questions or code requirements.

Once those calls have all been handled and I have my day routed, I will check in with the other inspectors to either ask for help if my plate is overflowing or offer my help if my day isn’t too busy - then it’s off to start visiting sites and getting my work done.

In between inspections, I will routinely make phone calls to anyone that called with questions and try to help give them solid direction. I always aim to personally do what I can to provide good customer service and help keep projects moving forward. Time is money and there is no need for me to be the reason there's a hold it up if I can help it.

Once my inspections are done, it may be the end of the day and time to head home. If I get done early with my inspections, I call around and ask if anyone needs help or I will start taking off my phone messages for the next today. Sometimes I can even get a few inspections done for the next day or spend a little time studying the code.

The best part though is that when my inspections are done, my core responsibilities for that day are done, too. Can you see how the stress level can be much lower than other jobs in the construction world?! Don’t get me wrong, every job has its crappy parts, like issuing stop work orders or dealing with hard personalities but being able to go home with a clean slate every day is a huge benefit. How many people get to take vacation and not come back to piles of work on their desk? Well, I do! When I am gone, another inspector is in charge of those inspections for that day. And when I return, I just jump right in and start doing inspections called in on the day I return.

Depending on the size of the city or county, there can be combination inspectors or individual trade inspectors. For example, I do building and plumbing inspections in my area of the city that I manage. Some small towns may have one person that does everything, acts as the building official, inspector and plans examiner. Or in large cities, you may be tasked with doing only residential inspections for building. It all just depends!

I hope this helps paint the picture of what it could be like to be an inspector. Feel free to reach out with questions!