 Aloha, I'm your host, Krista Stadler. Welcome to Condo Insider on Think Tech, Hawaii, where we explore all topics relative to condo living and your condo investment. Today, our guest is Randy Trager with Trager Design, here to discuss Ordinance 19-4, the new fire code of the city and county of Honolulu. And Randy, welcome to Condo Insider again. Hey, thanks for having me back. Thank you so much for being here. I know this is a really important topic and I've been kind of promoting it and encouraging people to watch this particular episode. Can you, I don't know if you want to start with telling us what it is and then telling us how it came about or why it came about or whichever way you want to do it, but I kind of wanted a little history of why it was implemented as well. Okay. It got started because there was a tragic situation recently just a few years ago at the Marcopolo Building. And what happened there was a disaster to put it mildly. The city officials, fire department officials, they just said, we're not doing this again. We don't care. We're just not doing this again. So, oh, next slide. And what they did is they convened the city council and this is like the third rendition of this bill. It's labeled 19-4 and it's in effect May 28th because that's when the first one passed. But it concerns how you fire protect and make life a safe place in a high-rise building, apartment building, like a condo. And that was the whole thrust of this. So, in order to preserve life, which is the real function of anybody that protects people, such as the fire department people and the police, how do you protect life? So, this then generated a statement essentially. And the statement was real simple. Why don't you do the next slide? Okay. And if you have a building that has eight floors or more, then you now are affected by this new fire code. Let's move to the next slide. What does it mean? You have to fire protect your building by a fire alarm system and by a fire suppression systems that are water-based. So, what does that mean? Here in Honolulu, the fire department has identified 373 buildings that need this. It just so happens that out of that, there's 42,500 apartments. We have to May 2026 to May 2030, depending on the kind of things that have to get done in order to have compliance. So, one of the questions always is, well, that's expensive. Are there any options? And the answer is yes. And we're going to talk a little bit more about this in a few minutes, but it's called the Building Fire Life Safety Evaluation Assessment. And it's to be performed by licensed design professional authorized by the building management that has to be done in such a way that the design professional has to use his seal or stamp. He has to be authenticated and he has to sign it, the report. And essentially, so I put a little note there, hope what that means. So, we can talk for a second here and just kind of get an idea what this is all about. Well, I definitely have some questions about this. Yeah. So typically, I think you had mentioned to me earlier that only a very small amount of the required assessments have been actually completed. So, there's quite a few more to go. How long does it normally take to do a full assessment? Like on average, I know it depends on the size of the building and whatnot. And what is the typical cost? How is the cost determined? What are some of the details of that assessment? What are they actually looking at during the assessment? Well, the assessment is trying to answer 17 very important categories. They range from mobility, getting people out of the building, getting firefighters into the building. Okay, that's actually all part of one part. And it goes on to 16 other categories after that. You get a rating or a score, if you will. That score is then tabulated at the end of the report. And you get it boils down to about six or seven questions would that end up saying yes, you comply. Excuse me. Or no, you don't. Now, the thing about it is, in order to pass as a building for fire life safety, you have to have all yeses. A single no means you're not qualified. You're not certified. So what happens is now you have to bring your deficiencies up to standard. And the standards are set essentially by the building codes. So that whole process starts at the basement parking garage levels goes through every floor, every type of room type of area, corridors, stairwells, lobbies, mechanical rooms, electrical rooms, janitor rooms, and it goes up every floor to the very roof. Because you have to inspect the roof also. Sure. And once you get all that done, then you have to do some engineering guys and you prepare your report and you do your assessment essentially on a floor by floor basis all the way down. And there's three or four really key areas that they want to focus on. One of them is called a fire barrier. The other one is known as a smoke barrier, which most of us never think of. No, then there is the alarm. That's supposed to notify people that hey, we got a problem. And then finally, how do you get people out efficiently? And that's the real bubble. And the reason is a lot of our older buildings didn't really plan for these kind of things that well, they didn't do it. Are the idea I never asked this, but are these all these 374 units of 73? I mean, buildings, are they all residential or is this a combination of commercial and residential? They're all condo buildings. Okay. Okay. I thought I was just curious. And the cost for this assessment. How is that? Well, divvied up typically amongst the it's gonna have to be essentially paid by every condo owner in the building, eventually, because that's who always ends up paying for anything in a building anyway. So but to get this going, we have to talk to let everybody know they have to vote. Mm hmm. The management doesn't get to arbitrarily choose the law states the voter, the residents of the building vote to either install sprinklers, or they vote to do the life safety evaluation. And that's a recorded vote. And it's submitted to the fire department. That's how serious is this? Yeah, that if they never voted, then they cannot move forward. And I would venture to say there are our associations out there that probably haven't voted yet, or haven't been able to come up with enough votes to form a forum or whatever it is, or yeah, right, right. But here's the thing, whatever the vote is, now it's applied entirely to every unit in the building. No one gets to opt out. Yes. Alright, now this is just we're just talking about the assessment. This is before either one of those decisions any work takes place regarding that. Well, that's the first decision is, are you going to do sprinklers? Are you going to do the life safety evaluation? That's the vote. Right. And then there's a whole then we're going to the next layer of it, which are going to be whichever path you're going to go down. Sure. Now the rather the ordinance is set up if you choose to do the sprinklers and the alarm systems, you don't have to worry about the life safety evaluation. Totally ignore it. Don't even have to spend the money on it. That's correct. But you do have to spend the money to engineer your building for the water system and all that other stuff and the alarm system, you got to put that in no matter what, which sounds significantly more expensive. I'm just saying it's going to be really expensive. The other option. But then you also have until 2030 to get that completed. Is that correct? It depends on the number of floors of the building. So if there are a certain number of floors, you get your time frame stretches to 2030. I see that's why you had the range in there. Correct. Yeah. 20, 20 states to 2030. It depends on the number of floors of the building. So, but money wise, let's look at it this way. If you're going to sprinkle the building, it's not it's numbers in the range of the mid 20s to the mid 30s per apartment. Oh my goodness. Is the going idea right now. Nobody really knows because no one's done it yet. So when you ask how much is it? Nobody knows. Hasn't been money yet. So everybody's a guinea pig. Well, I wonder if this is going to affect sales for those older complexes that are I would imagine that's a whole other conversation. Conversation. Yeah. Okay. So you're right. So but whatever it is, it gets divided out. Now the life safety evaluation to perform the corrections probably is half. Yeah, or even a third or quarter of doing the wet sprinkler system. Interesting. Wow. All right. So so for the assessment, just the assessment, how long does that assessment take typically? Well, there's only two companies doing it that I found so far. They're both engineering companies are specialty engineers. They're not fast. We can tell because Mr. Dennis, the fire chief, as of the middle of January, he had 12 out of 373. Yeah, because and he was really disheartened that it was that small. So what he did is in the middle of January, a third week of January, he had all his building inspectors, because they know their buildings, right? Take a hand prepared letter from Mr. Neto's and personally hand deliver it to every building manager, face to face, eye to eye, hand to hand, a friendly reminder that they need to get on this and get going. I think that's a really good idea. Yeah, they took them three days. They only had three days to deliver these to all the buildings. That's amazing. But they did it. Wow. Now. What's happened after that? No one knows. Yeah. Well, they're going to have to get on a waiting list with one of these two companies to do the assessment. So they really have to do is get their vote. Well, that that yeah, I guess that goes before anything, doesn't it? Yeah, that happens until the vote. I have to return the vote into the fire department. Do interesting. Yeah, because that's who wants to see the vote is Mr. Neto's the fire chief. So each board has to take the responsibility to provide that vote on some type of document to the fire to the fire department. It's got to be documented. It's got to be legitimate. It's got to be that, you know, there's always somebody that's going to complain about whatever, but whatever the vote is, it applies to the entire occupants of all the buildings of the building. Alright, whatever that vote is. So if they decide not to put the system in, Oh, you know what? I think we're gonna, we're gonna stop and gonna get into a big long discussion about something and we've got to go to a break. So stay tuned. This is extremely important information. If any of you live in a condo on a condo, I should say, or part of a board. So please join us after the break at condo insider with Randy Trager. Thank you so much. Aloha. Out and about. It's a show that we have every other Monday on Think Tech Live here. We explore a variety of topics that are really interesting. We have four organizations, events, and the people who fuel them in our city, state, country, and world. We've got some amazing guests on here like all the shows at Think Tech. So if you want to catch up on stuff, tune into my show every other Monday and other shows here on Think Tech Live. It's a great place to learn about stuff, to be informed. And if you have some ideas, I'm on my show. Let's talk about it. See you later. Aloha and welcome back to condo insider. I am your host, Chris Stadler here with Randy Trager with Trager Designs talking about ordinance 19-4 regarding the new fire code. Well, it's not really new, but it's deadlines are coming up quickly. So let's talk about pick up where we left off and talk about if you if your board does decide not to go with the full sprinkler system installation, and they're going to go, they're going to move forward with the assessment. What is the deadline to have the assessment? I guess completed, right? There's two steps. First, you have to turn in the assessment, and it has to be documented, etc. with all the things that you got to, you know, by when? That is May 3rd, 2021. Okay, I think we have a slide for that just to really, really nail that in your brains, right? Right, it says conducted, but what that means to the third martial guy is he wants to see it. Yes, by that date. That's exactly what he's talking about. So we're like, we're not talking a little bit more than a year from now. And if I understand understood you correctly, there's only two companies that each have one person each. So two people doing this assessments, which could be a month to two months long, right? Yes. So if you haven't already, people got to get get your board going and get your vote and decide which way you're going to go so you can get these deadlines. Right. If they don't meet that deadline. Is there some type of fine or penalty? Yeah, it's funny. I asked that one of the fire inspectors, he said, Well, right now, the plan is they will get a notice of violation from the fire department. I'm sure there's some number dollar associated with that. Well, that means you have a clap and you have to bring your building into compliance, or you have to show efforts to bring your building into compliance and to be honest, it turns out what that means in English, you have to file a building permit application to bring your building into compliance. Oh, and you wouldn't otherwise if you had completed the assessment on time. Well, that's the next step after the assessment. Yeah, okay, so they have to get a building permit to do the work. So the assessment is completed. You meet your deadline. And now you need to move forward with actually making the changes in the building. So let's talk about if you don't choose to go with the full sprinkler system. What are some of the types of things that that they're going to be having to change in their building? Well, smoke barriers is probably the single largest concern. And the reason is, in a high rise building, it's been proven statistically, nation actually worldwide for a number of years, anywhere from two thirds to three quarters of the people who succumbed to a fire in a building like that, it's because of smoke. That's what does it because there's a lot of toxins and smoke, a lot of toxins. And they come from the finishes that we install and other things like that. But we have to address a total of 16 categories. Smoke barriers is only one category. Fire barriers is another category. And those are defined by building code, what they are and how they're supposed to be constructed. Older buildings in the 60s, 70s, even through the early 80s, in mid 80s, they were kind of lax on doing those sorts of things at the construction level. And that's just because that was the nature of construction at the time. Today, just because the building seemed to be okay in 1972, doesn't mean it's still okay today. So what happens now is we have to compare the building to what is anticipated to bring compliance. Now, that's what's going on. And we have 16 categories to do it in. And one of the biggest categories is getting people out of the building. Oh, a plan to get them out. Yeah, that's the first thing on the checklist. How do you get them out? How do the fire department people personnel go in? How do you get them out safely? So nobody gets hurt? How do you get them out? And the higher the number of floors, more difficult it is. Imagine, right? And so some will have to build new stairwells, possibly. Is there any any group other than being eight floors or less? Is there any other type of building that would be an exception to have an exception to having to do any of this? There is. It's a technical exception, kind of hard to explain. But if you're if all the floors of your building have walkways that are actually exterior of all the sleeping rooms and the apartments, and the stairwells are open and not enclosed, then those buildings can avoid the fire life safety requirement to go through. May not necessarily get them off the hook for putting in sprinklers and alarms, but it definitely but it can do that now. That's an exception. Every building has to be evaluated. Whether or not that exception really applies to the building. That's that's what it happens. And I'm really curious about smoke barrier. What would be tell me what they do to create a smoke? I mean, I understand a little bit more the fire barrier. But what what is this? Explain what a smoke barrier is? What does it look like? Yeah, well, that's, yeah, that's chapter seven of the building code. Okay. And the chapter is smoke barriers. But what do they do? What are they physically? You have this existing building that doesn't have a smoke barrier. What are you doing to it to create the smoke barrier? You have to seal connections and joints. Okay. Okay. A lot of concrete fabricated building concrete fabricated buildings, they have loose joints. But they were never correctly fire stopped what we call fire stopped. So sometimes the solution is fire stopping certain things. Sometimes the solution is collecting the door going into it. That's what I was. Yeah. Okay. Correcting the door of the apartment. Okay. The ductwork. Some buildings have not or they have forced ventilation with the fans on the roof and all the way in the apartment. It just goes out the top. Okay, because that's where they vent the kitchen cooking area and they vent the bathrooms. And if they have washer and dryers in the apartments, that's where they vent the dryers. Absolutely. They have those ductwork. Well, if you don't have and smoke travels up those ductworks and into all the apartments around the ground of the ductwork, even though there's no fire in there. Wow, that is just they're not asked to be corrected. Yeah, I can see I can I live in a condo on the 23rd floor. I can just I can just visualize everything you're talking about. And some of the condos have central air. Well, they have return air ducts. And so those have to be considered. What do you do with those? Because if one apartment is housing a problem, you don't want it to pump air it smoke air into other people's apartments. Absolutely, especially when everyone is sleeping. This also sounds like just a huge I hate to use the word disruption, but it's going to be no matter which way you go, there's going to be disruption to the occupants of the building as the work's being done. That's correct. And sounds like almost in most of these cases, again, no matter which way you go, they may have to even vacate their property for a period of time. Well, basically, you do it floor by floor. That's really the only way you can do it. And so you have to make your remedies for that for you to start from the bottom, work your way up or you start at the roof and work your way down. And that's essentially how you have to do it. And then there's testing along the way to make sure the work that you did actually functions the way it's supposed to. And there's, and you still have to put in the alarm system. Which connects to the fire department. Right. You still, no matter what, you got to put the alarm system in. And then there would be testing as time goes on. Has this type of ordinance and kind of the way they're structuring it been done in any other city in the United States that you know of? Well, Hawaii is unique. You know, Hawaii was all high-rise condo building rules and et cetera, et cetera, originated here in Hawaii. Interesting. Back in the 60s. Meaning that the other... They didn't have high-rise apartment buildings in other cities in those days, except for people like New York and some of the other cities, like Chicago, New York, and Philly. San Francisco and... Well, San Francisco didn't have a lot of high-rises because their soil doesn't allow for those kind of foundations. So they don't have too many. They have some now, but they're all office buildings, like trans-America and people like that. So... So we're kind of the trendsetter? We are the trendsetter. Or maybe the guinea pig? I'm not sure which way you want to look at it. I don't like using the term guinea pig. Well, somebody's got to do it. I suppose. But you are correct that we are paving the way because we have more high-rise apartment buildings per square foot, you know, per landmass on this island than probably any other city in America. Now, you have to go to Hong Kong. You get the other Asian countries. You're going to see lots of it over there. And you're saying thing in Japan, Korea, and all those other countries. You know, those... Because they lose to it. That's what they built. Yeah, exactly. So your company, you, along with it, sounds like... I have a team. Your team. You'll actually be, or actually are, you're providing the assessments now? Yes. Okay. Yeah, we'll be doing the assessments. We're connected with a contractor who has all the correct licenses to perform any of the correction works. So it's very important because not all of the contractors have the correct licenses. So they have to depend on other people coming in on a schedule basis. But if you have a contractor that does have all the proper licenses, they just schedule their crew, bang, bang, bang. Do you feel like... I'm feeling like it, but do you feel like the building department's just going to be bombarded with... As people wait in procrastinating, as we can see they are, and you know they will, are they just going to be bombarded with permits to get these things done? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering how fast... I mean, everything has its delays. The voting and the, you know, all of it has its delays. That gets us back to the permitting process that's now in effect from December 2018. And what it says is you better do good quality and complete detailed information drawings, not omitting anything. And then you can go through the system pretty well. But the trick is if you short change the information on the drawings for expediency reasons, then your drawings will be kicked back and sometimes they'll just simply say, sorry, but your plans are rejected. Yeah. Start over. And they only have, they only reject them once or twice before they just... You get two cycles. Two. Two. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, better get... They don't care. I build the building because you get two. Yeah. Wow. So having some alchemy on how to put all that together is going to be extremely valuable. Right. The whole process. Yeah. And that's what I've been doing for a long time is condos and doing that. So I've got some familiarity. Exactly. Sounds like you're going to be very, very busy. Could be. But if people don't vote, there's nothing to do. Well, that's true, but it doesn't sound like they're really not going to have a choice when it comes right down to it. It's just how long... Well, here's the deal. If they don't vote, then they vote for the end sprinklers. Oh, that's just going to have to happen. Yeah. Yeah. They're not going to have a choice. That's it. So that's not to have your choice taken away from you and to vote and make the best decision based on the ownership of that particular condo. Exactly. Right. Well, I really appreciate you being here. And also, can you please share your website information again? It's triggerdesign808.com. Okay. That's it. Randy, you have all of this information and a bit more, actually, that we kind of cut out for people to go ahead and go on and do that. In fact, this entire presentation is on my website. Excellent. Just click on condos and then you'll see some stuff under there. Click on the buttons. And if you want to read all 30-something pages of the ordinance, you can click on that too. I went through it. It's fun fun. Thank you so much. Thank you all out there for watching Condo Insider. And I will see you next month. Take care. Aloha.