SEC. 8.10. DEPARTMENT OF BUILDING INSPECTION RECORDS.

(a) Definitions. For purposes of this Section 8.10, the following definitions apply:

“City” means the City and County of San Francisco.

“Construction or Occupancy Permit” means any Building Permit, Site Permit (including any Addenda connected with a Site Permit), Certificate of Final Completion, Certificate of Final Completion and Occupancy, or Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, or any permit that serves essentially the same function as any of the foregoing. It does not mean an Electrical Permit, Mechanical Permit, or Plumbing Permit.

“Department” means the Department of Building Inspection.

“Earthquake-related Hazards” means any hazard of any kind that can be caused in whole or in part by an earthquake and includes but is not limited to hazards relating to liquefaction, earthquake- related landslides or debris flows, earthquake-related fires, earthquake-related flooding, and tsunamis

and seiches, in addition to direct effects from ground shaking.

“Relevant Building” means the building or other structure, at any stage of design or construction and whether or not occupied, that is or was the subject of a particular Construction or Occupancy Permit.

(b) Retention Requirements. Notwithstanding any other provision of City law, the Department shall permanently retain any writing, as defined in Section 6252(g) of the California Government Code, that is in the Department’s actual possession, if the writing (which, for purposes of this Section 8.10, is called the “record”) satisfies at least one of the following criteria and no exception identified in subsection (c) of this Section applies:

(1) The record was submitted to the Department as part of an application for, or as a condition of obtaining, a Construction or Occupancy Permit.

(2) The record pertains to the Relevant Building and was in the possession of the Department prior to any decision regarding the issuance of a Construction or Occupancy Permit, regardless of the manner in which the Department obtained the record or the purpose for which the record was obtained by or submitted to the Department.

(3) The record was created or received by the Department after the issuance of a Construction or Occupancy Permit, and contains any reference to the possibility (including any question about the possibility, and any response to such a question) that:

(A) The Department should not have issued the Construction or Occupancy Permit for the Relevant Building as the Relevant Building was designed at the time that the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(B) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to endanger human health or safety, or may endanger human health or safety to a greater degree, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(C) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to damage property, or may damage property to a greater degree, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(D) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to adversely affect the value of real property, or may adversely affect the value of real property to a greater degree, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued; or

(E) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to give rise to litigation, or may give rise to more instances of litigation, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued.

(4) The record was created or received by the Department after the issuance of a Construction or Occupancy Permit, and contains any reference to the possibility (including any question about the possibility, and any response to such a question) of any of the following:

(A) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, is experiencing, or may experience, greater compressive stress, tensile stress, shear stress, deformation, strain, or deflection than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(B) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, is tilting, or may tilt, to a degree greater than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(C) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, or soil or other material beneath or adjacent to the Relevant Building, is subsiding or settling, or may subside or settle, to a degree greater than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(D) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, is at greater risk of collapse than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(E) The Relevant Building is more vulnerable to Earthquake-related Hazards, wind, flooding, or other natural hazards than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;

(F) The Relevant Building is more vulnerable to fires of any kind than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued; or

(G) The construction or existence of the Relevant Building, or any site preparation related to construction of the Relevant Building, has made any other building more vulnerable to any of the conditions listed in subsections (b)(4)(A)–(F), to a degree greater than, or in a manner different from, that which the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy permit was issued.

(c) Exceptions. The retention requirements of Section 8.10 do not apply to any record described in subsections (b)(1) or (b)(2) that satisfies either of the following criteria:

(1) All or substantially all of the record consists of mathematical calculations underlying architectural or engineering plans that will be retained by the Department, and the Department does not possess an electronic version of the record; or

(2) The record concerns a building for which the Department has issued a Construction or Occupancy Permit for the building’s overall structure (sometimes referred to as the building’s “core and shell”); the Department has also issued, or plans to issue, separate Construction and Occupancy Permits for multiple individual units or uses within the building; and the record concerns individual units or uses within the building rather than the building’s overall structure.

(d) Manner of Retention. Notwithstanding any other provision of City law, records retained pursuant to this Section 8.10 may be stored electronically, on microfilm, in hard copy, or in any other manner that does not prevent the Department from preserving, locating, and retrieving the record.

(e) Outside Entities. The Department’s decision to issue a Construction or Occupancy Permit may not rely, in whole or in part, on any work product of any kind produced by any person who is not an employee of the City or any other government, or by any entity that is not part of the City or any other government, unless that outside person or entity agrees to give the Department a copy of any record that would, if it were in the Department’s possession, be subject to the retention requirements of this Section 8.10. Nothing in this subsection (e) shall be construed to impair any right or obligation under any contract that exists as of the effective date of this ordinance.

(f) Relationship to Other Retention Requirements. This Section 8.10 is not intended to, and does not, supplant any other records retention requirement imposed by State or City law that is applicable to the Department, and does not supplant the Department’s records retention policy. Rather, this Section supplements existing legal requirements applicable to the retention of Department records, and shall be incorporated by law into the Department’s records retention policy.

(g) Records Requests. In a prominent location on its public website, the Department shall post the name(s), address(es), phone number(s), fax number(s), and e-mail address(es) of the Department employee or employees to whom requests for public records (made pursuant to Section 6253(b) of the California Government Code, Chapter 67 of this Administrative Code, or other applicable laws) may be directed. The Department may satisfy this requirement by posting, in a prominent location on its public website, a direct link to the contact information specified in the previous sentence, provided that this link is clearly labeled.

(Added by Ord. 86-17, File No. 170031, App. 3/31/2017, Eff. 4/30/2017)