Afternoon everyone.

Welcome to the October Government Operations Committee meeting.

At this moment, I'd like to recognize Council members and staff present in the chambers.

And we have uh councilwoman Alcorn, Councilwoman Peck, and I guess that's all for the council members.

Uh we have staff from uh district B, District C, District H, District I, District K, at large one, and then uh also online is uh I'm sorry, District G.

So in District B is online as as well.

Um we do not have a quorum uh at the moment.

We do not uh have one, so as has been a long-standing tradition of the council, we proceed with the presentations.

If an agenda item requires a quorum to move forward as vice chair of the committee, I will ensure there's a quorum before the committee proceeds to vote.

In today's meeting, we have a couple of presentations.

Therefore, public speakers will be called upon after the last presentation.

Uh at this moment, I'll yield to Rudy Moreno, Deputy Director and Joe Hana Clark, Deputy City City Engineer from Houston Public Works.

They will be providing an update on staff augmentation.

Council members and staff, please please hold your questions until the end of the presentation.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, uh Vice Chair and members of the Committee on Government Relations.

My name is Rudy Moreno, Deputy Director of the Houston Permanent Center.

Um today I'm also accompanied with Mrs.

Clark.

Go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, afternoon.

My name is Joanna Clark.

I'm the deputy city engineer with Houston Public Works.

So we appreciate the opportunity.

I think we had them both on.

That's why appreciate the opportunity to speak uh before the committee today.

Um today we're going to talk a little bit about third party or staff augmentation and how the city of Houston has utilized this.

So who encompasses plan review?

Plan review is a comprehensive multidisciplinary review team across key departments for residential, commercial, and public development.

Uh it's it's uh comparable to Dallas, um, who also has disciplines, um, but Dallas is a lot smaller.

Uh for fiscal year uh 2025, we reviewed over 60,000 unique projects.

Uh but we performed 85,000 project reviews, meaning that at least 25,000 projects of that 60 were reviewed more than once.

Um back up a little bit if it's okay.

I'd talk a little bit about the departments that are within plan review.

You got the planning and development department, Houston Fire Department, building code enforcement under Houston Public Works, Office of the City Engineer under Houston Public Works, and our Houston Health Department.

Those are the five departments that are involved in this.

The Parks Department is also involved, but they are through they they receive their reviews through the planning department.

Uh beginning of fiscal year 2026, our service level agreement for uh plan review was um reduced from 10 days for residential and 15 days to commercial to 17 days across the board.

Meaning all projects reviewed must be uh 80 percent of those projects must be reviewed in seven days or less.

Next slide, please.

So talking a little bit about uh plan review and and and the code enforcement.

Uh our responsibility is to review and approve construction project plans to ensure compliance with all applicable building codes and life safety regulations before permits are issued.

This process verify verifies structural integrity and ensures projects meet established safety standards.

In 2022, we expanded the our staff augmentation for building code enforcement to include structural electrical and plumbing disciplines, and those disciplines were those reviews were helped in our uh revamped after hours program, uh which you may know as a former uh customer paid overtime program.

Uh resubmissions and first-time commercial reviews.

So in the office of the city engineer, we also use staff augmentations for various various purposes.

So as you know, our office is tasked with reviewing all the projects that have any type of impact in the public right-of-way that uh includes infrastructure like water, wastewater, um, traffic uh assets in the right-of-way.

Also, the floodplain management office is under the umbrella of the uh Office of the City Engineer, very important office to look into, and that conducts many, many plan reviews under these categories.

Um we are responsible for ensuring that there is compliance with the local and state level regulations, minus, and all the guidelines that we already have in place.

Um this office of the city engineer, we specifically have user staff augmentation to review plans that are within uh now.

We need to move to the next slide.

I'm sorry.

I just realized you'll are in the previous one.

Uh the this disciplines where we have user staff augmentation are traffic and mobility, uh, stonewater, uh again, the flood plane management office uh conducts reviews that is user staff augmentation too.

And currently we are engaging in two resources that are gonna assist us reviewing telecommunications plans that are increasing uh significantly recently, and also encroachment applications.

I want to also mention mention that we have a special programs like the uh community rating system, CRS, if you're familiar with it, is part of the floodplain management office, and it's very, very critical for our residents to get the flood insurance discount that we get right now are in class five and looking into moving into a class four, uh going from 30 to 25 percent discount that demands several resources throughout the year to do intensive research, review all our uh elevation certificates, construction projects and so on, to be able to update this plan and be sure that we get classified properly and that we can communicate and uh meet with the requirements uh that FEMA and the federal and state regulations have in place.

So we do use the staff augmentation for this effort.

Um also on the standards and specific on review.

Um it's very important that we keep up with technology and with the latest practices in the engineering um uh requirements for both design and construction.

So we are expanding into using some of these resources to help us partially with this with these tasks.