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San Francisco Soft Story Screening Forms Are Being Mailed This Week

A licensed architect or civil or structural engineer would need to visit the building and complete your screening form as it requires a better understanding of ordinance, scope, code language, and construction type, than is typically possessed by a building owner or a contractor.
Enginious Structures, Inc. can assist you in the screening of your building and completing the form for you. This will clarify whether or not you are exempt from any further action. The form requires a design professional to answer the following questions.
• Is the building wood-frame construction?
• Was the building permitted prior to January 1, 1978?
• Is the building three or more stories, or two stories over a basement or under floor area that extends above the grade? (Please, keep in mind that the definition of “stories” that the Department of Building Inspection utilizes may not be what you are familiar with.)
• Does the building contain five or more dwelling units?
If we find that the answer is yes to any of the department questions but you still believe your building is exempt you can file the optional evaluation form as discussed above. We can assist you in this process as well.
Our fee for the site visit and filling out the screening form is $250- $500 depending on the building size. However, if the building needs further evaluation and you hire us to do this evaluation and design a retrofit if necessary we will deduct the evaluation cost from our design fee; so the cost of the screening is essentially zero.

SF’s Mandatory Seismic Retrofit Program for Soft-Story Buildings

Below is a summary of what you need to know about the new ordinance in plain words. IS MY BUILDING A SOFT-STORY BUILDING? If the following four requirements apply to your building, then it is a suspect for a soft story building. 1) Wood-frame building with either 3+ stories, OR 2 stories over a basement/underfloor […]

Mandatory Retrofitting of SF’s Soft Story Buildings

Last week, San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors and City Officials signed the Mandatory Seismic Retrofit Program for Soft Story Wood Frame Buildings.  This measure will strengthen thousands of San Francisco’s buildings and assure a faster recovery from future earthquakes. Over 55,000 San Franciscans live in wood-frame buildings built before 1978, […]

D/B or not D/B, that is the question

The term “soft story” building describes a building with a level or story that is significantly more flexible than stories above it, such as an open parking area or a commercial space, which can be hazardous in the event of an earthquake.  The Bay Area has thousands of these building.  Damage to soft story buildings […]

What did we learn from the SF voluntary soft story ordinance – Voluntary programs don’t work!

Voluntary programs don’t work!

San Francisco Soft-Story Ordinance

On March 16, 2010, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a voluntary soft-story retrofit program, which will take effect on April 19, 2010. This program benefits soft-story building owners who voluntary retrofit their buildings by: Waiving building department plan review fees, which can amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per project. Expediting […]

Why Retrofit?

Although current soft-story ordinances do not require a mandatory retrofit of your building, you must retrofit your building to have it removed from the soft-story inventory list.  To encourage owners to complete voluntary retrofits, the City of Alameda will waive all plan review and inspection fees for soft-story retrofit projects if they are submitted within […]

Soft-Story Buildings: An Overview

What is a soft-story building? The term “soft-story building” describes a building with a level or story that is significantly more flexible than the stories above it, which can be hazardous in the event of an earthquake. In multi-unit wood-frame buildings, weakness at the ground level stems from large openings in perimeter walls or insufficient […]