Questionable school safety inspections

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Every year, City of Austin building inspectors do thousands of inspections to make sure our homes and buildings are safe.

They inspect them for mechanical, plumbing and electrical safety issues. But what happens when the inspector does not actually show up in person to conduct the inspection?

Records of several City of Austin building inspectors show some electrical safety inspections were passed even though an inspector did not actually inspect the work in person.

On the morning of Sept. 3, 2008, in the dark, pre-dawn hours, City of Austin electrical inspector, Marvin Pace managed to conduct 30 safety inspections on 12 Austin school campuses in just 45 minutes and 50 seconds.

Below is an interactive map showing all the places Pace 'inspected:'

View Pre-dawn inspections in a larger map

KXAN analyzed data from a report generated from the City of Austin's Planning and Development Reviews computer system, called AMANDA, which contains all the information for scheduling and completing building inspections.

Each building inspector is assigned a laptop to access the AMANDA system. While still on-site, each inspector is supposed to log in, record the inspection and whether it passed.

According to data in AMANDA, Marvin Pace started his day at 6:19 a.m. at Oak Springs Elementary in East Austin. He claims to have conducted a final safety inspection on a portable classroom, also known as Unit F.

One minute later, at 6:20 a.m., Pace managed to make it to Bedichek Middle School, in South Austin, for another final electrical inspection. For the next 40 or so minutes, Pace claimed to have conducted one inspection after another at schools located in opposite sides of the city.

From 6:19 to 7:04 a.m., Pace claimed to have driven an estimated 167 miles and conducted 30 inspections at 12 AISD campuses. The official sunrise on that day was 7:09 a.m.

"How is it possible for an inspector to conduct 30 inspections in 45 minutes?" asks Greg Guernsey, Director of Planning & Development Review. "Well, it's not possible."

Greg Guernsey is the director of planning and development department for the City of Austin. He recently inherited the division that oversees building inspections.

"This was done by a city employee on the Internet logging in all these things," said Guernsey.

Pace is not the only City building inspector to pass inspections without actually conducting the inspection in person.

An investigation by the City of Austin Auditors Integrity Unit found several electrical inspectors admitted to the practice. The inspectors said their "workload makes it difficult, if not impossible to meet their performance measures". Some inspectors said "they may conduct courtesy inspections with trusted contractors required an inspection in a short time frame, so as not to delay the contractor". The report said several inspectors "justified the process as good customer service."

That does not sit well with Stanton Strabary, whose children attend Clayton Elementary, one of the schools where Pace claimed to have conducted safety inspections.

"My kids safety is very important, so the fact that the inspector whose job it is to inspect it, didn't even come out to do that makes me pretty nervous," said Strabary

Guernsey said the City's policy has changed and inspectors are now being tracked through GPS.

"In order to do a final electric, in the intervening time after this, after this was brought to the City’s attention, there was a final inspection done there, it was an inspector that physically went to the site and logged a report at the site upon leaving," said Guernsey.

Guernsey said parents should not be concerned. The buildings passed inspections for temporary electric service.

"The temporary electric service and a final are basically the same," he said. "The temporary electric allows Austin energy and mount those bubbles, those meters on property, to receive electrical service, so they are already inspected at that time for the things we would look at which is pretty much on the outside of the building so the inside of the building in order to be compliant."

While records show most of the buildings did pass temporary electric inspections, some did not. Records show there were no temporary electric inspections for four buildings at Clayton elementary. Only those pre-dawn final inspections logged in by Marvin Pace.

That is not something a parent wants to hear.

"Can they send somebody out now to inspect and see how it is," said Strabary. "I mean they need to do their job and come back out and at least take a look at it."

Guernsey said the schools buildings were permitted by the City of Austin but because the electric service is provided by the Pedernales Electric Coop, a temporary and final inspection is not required.

He did not say why Pace bothered to enter the inspection in the system, if it was not required. That and the fact that inspectors were passing inspections on the computer, without physically being on site,