Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Municipal Inspections with Jim Greer

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 39

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Jim Greer, Arvada's Construction & Inspection Supervisor, talks about the municipal inspection process and how his team works to protect critical city infrastructure. The team of 10 inspectors partners with contractors and developers, ensuring projects are completed safely and efficiently.

Episode highlights: 

  • The team focuses on everything underground up to the surface (e.g., water and sewer lines, electrical cable, streets, sidewalks)
  • Inspectors work proactively to identify potential conflicts before construction begins
  • The two-year warranty process ensures infrastructure is properly tested before becoming a city asset

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Visit us at arvadaco.gov/podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Inside Arvada. I'm one of your hosts, katie Patterson, and today we have on Municipal Inspector Jim Greer. Jim was hired with the city in June of 2018 as a Municipal Inspector, and then he was promoted to a foreman in 2021, and then to his current role as the construction and inspection supervisor in March of 2022. And prior to that, he has also had similar roles with the city and county of Denver and in private construction companies and, as always, I'm joined by my co-host, sean. Hey, sean.

Speaker 2:

Hi Katie. Yeah, we've been. We had Jim penciled in as a guest for a while now and we kept bumping him back for other guests, more like timely guests, but I'm glad we finally got to him. Not that he wasn't important, it's just his work is and his team's work is always going on. So we could. There was no timely aspect of when we had Jim on, but I'm really glad we sat down and we had a great insightful conversation and I liked what he said about kind of the view of inspectors and his team's work kind of used to be viewed as like the bad guy, like they would come in at the end of a project and point out all the things that were done incorrectly, and he made the point that they really try and set up contractors for success really right from the beginning of the project and so I appreciated that insight and trivia was really fun as well. So make sure you listen all the way to the end for trivia.

Speaker 1:

Hi, Jim, Welcome to Inside Arvada. Thanks so much for being here. So start us off.

Speaker 3:

Tell us what's your favorite part of your job Working on the inspection team? We have such a great team. We're all gelled together, we have each other's back and and another you know great part about being able to work here in Arvada is I. I grew up here, just three blocks away from city hall, so it's almost like it is my hometown, but it's almost like I'm right at home at city hall and giving back to the community. Yeah, it's great, Love it.

Speaker 2:

Huge perk for a lot of people, for sure. So tell us a little bit more about what you and your team do as municipal inspectors for folks like me who really don't have a clue.

Speaker 3:

Yep. So we handle basically all construction that takes place in the right-of-way and then some that takes place on private property as well. So that includes CIP projects, right-of-way projects, everything. So the inspection team is delivered, a plan set basically on our computers, we go out, we start the pre-construction meeting and one of the things we really try to foster right from the beginning is that we're all in this together and we want to collaborate with the contractor, with the developer, and it's a partnership to get these projects into completion and that's our goal.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so walk us through that a little bit more, like what does a kind of like start to finish look like for an inspector? What are you all doing?

Speaker 3:

Yep. So we get a project and we try to get it as early as possible, so we have time to start reviewing the plans. We always try to pre-plan everything. We love to be a couple weeks ahead of the project so that if there's any conflicts or anything that we can call out, we can address those prior to the time of construction.

Speaker 1:

So, a conflict would be like an underground utility type of issue.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, or just constructability issues. There's times where on plans it works, but when you're out there actually trying to build that in the field, it's just not possible. It just can't be done. So we try to look out for that in advance and then, if we're two weeks ahead, usually we can solve those problems before we're there, and then they would hold up a project or make it more difficult.

Speaker 1:

And then, yeah, that helps the construction just get done more timely yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so you're essentially like a quality control, like you're making sure that these projects are done correctly and up to certain codes. Tell us a little bit about, like the standards that the city here in Nevada has for road projects and engineering projects. How are they? You know, how is that set of codes different, maybe, from other municipalities, and how does that help, you know, help shape the work that you do?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we all follow some general standards and specifications, like for ADA, proag, which is related to public right-of-way guidelines, and then we have our own city of Arvada standards and specifications that are tailored to us. So that's really what we follow, that's our book and that's how we try to build everything. And then we also have plan sets that are site-specific, that apply to that, that maybe have to be tailored to that specific site so that the infrastructure that we install works.

Speaker 2:

And tell us about the difference between because we have building inspectors and you're municipal inspectors. I feel like a lot of people might think of inspector and they think building inspector. Come over maybe to my house and inspect that my house is up to fire code or something like that. Help us understand the difference there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so municipal inspectors. We basically look at everything underground up to the surface. So starting with the deepest utility, which is typically a sewer line, all the way up to the sidewalk, concrete curb, gutter, street in front of your house. Building inspector basically takes over from after the foundation's in then they look at everything from there up so as the building, the structure is constructed and they follow a uniform code throughout the whole United States. They follow the uniform building code so they look at structures and everything like that. States. They follow the uniform building code so they look at structures and everything like that. So we work closely together as well because obviously we start with the infrastructure, first we install that and then we basically hand it off to the building inspectors to complete the rest of the building Nice, and you kind of started to allude to this.

Speaker 1:

Like when a conflict happens, you try to catch those things beforehand, but sometimes that doesn't work out. That's just not always the reality that in construction things can go wrong. So how does your team work to address issues when they do come up out on site?

Speaker 3:

Yep, so that's a time I think we really do well, so we collaborate with all the other city teams anyone that would have you know be the subject matter expert for what we're dealing with so and we try to resolve it as quickly as possible so we, so construction, can keep moving. I'm trying to think of a specific example.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so what you do is like I was thinking about stop work orders specifically, which come up if something's going wrong but, you also try to resolve things without having to go that far.

Speaker 3:

That's kind of like.

Speaker 1:

the worst case scenario is you have to do a stop work order right, and that's where everything stops until they resolve the issue Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

We try not to issue a stop work order.

Speaker 3:

It's not good for anybody, but sometimes we have to go that route and we don't hesitate to go that route when it involves safety or putting our infrastructure at risk.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, there's times that we have to go to that stop work order to protect traveling public, the folks in the community themselves or the workers as well if they're being put, if their life's in jeopardy, getting in trenches. We see just a variety of different things that happen. Where a worker we may show up on a job of a utility excavation and the worker is in an unsafe trench without protection, sure we're going to issue a stop work order. There's nothing more important than protecting that guy. And then we follow up with a meeting and we can progress from there all the way to putting a license on hold for contractors in the city. We've had, there's been, some stop work orders that have been very large and we've had to assess double permit fees because of just the amount of city time that was spent dealing with that and it's not it's not fair to others to incur those costs. So we try to apply those costs then to the person that caused this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was thinking like I think this isn't a specific example to a specific project, but like we were talking about offline, a little bit like the potential threat to those underground utilities in particular, like the potential threat to those underground utilities in particular, like if they hit a fiber line or something that your internet goes out. That's one thing that sucks. But it's not necessarily like life and safety, but a water line is.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely A sewer line is Like if those get hit by a construction crew, you're potentially contaminating our drinking water or something, so like that's kind of like the scale at which I think the severity of this stuff really matters, and then I think obviously in human safety too.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, those are good examples and it's good Thanks for mentioning that, because we've we started off with just with the inspection team and we really started trying to protect our underground infrastructure. There's a lot of different construction methods now that don't involve just open excavation and it's directional drilling and that puts our infrastructure at risk. So we started it with the inspection team and now the city has a underground damage prevention team and we work closely with them daily to ensure that our infrastructure underground is protected. And we have every construction job that takes place in Arvada. We hold a pre-construction meeting and at that time we set clear expectations and really lay everything out. We want to be and upfront and we've found that just works.

Speaker 3:

And we've also heard from contractors at first you know they don't like us very much because of the extra steps they need to take to ensure that our infrastructure is protected. But I tell you halfway through that project they're glad and they're like you know this is worth it that we actually put eyes on our stuff prior to, you know, passing a directional drill underground that you have. No, you know you have limited control over and putting infrastructure at risk and themselves, like you said, when you hit a water main, you know it. I mean that thing goes and we have extremely large transmission mains in the city which we protect at a higher level for that reason, because it's just more dangerous when you're talking about anything over 12 inches, especially on a water main.

Speaker 2:

Talk to us a little bit about warranty, because I know it's a huge part of your work Warranty periods and the warranty process. I know like you've compared it to buying a car. Right, you buy a car, it comes with a warranty. You might want to purchase additional warranty if you want, but tell us about warranties and how that relates to your work, yep.

Speaker 3:

So we've recently, within the last couple of years, with our partners in CED we've developed Community and economic development.

Speaker 1:

Thank you very much.

Speaker 3:

We've developed the whole new warranty process have the infrastructure installed and approved and accepted by the city into initial warranty prior to start building the building or whatever you're installing that infrastructure for, whatever the purpose of the new infrastructure is for. So we install all the infrastructure. We do warranty checks. Our inspection team has a goal of when you get into initial warranty, when that project is ready to get into initial warranty, that we have zero punch list items. So we catch everything at the time of inspection and we make sure that it's corrected. Then what is a punch list? So a punch list is like a call out. So if you have it's construction, Things don't always go right.

Speaker 1:

It's something essentially like the contractor needs to fix before it can go into warranty.

Speaker 3:

So they install it, they do, we inspect it, they do the best of their ability. Say they're backfilling a water main and we have a tracer wire on top of that. During that backfill it knocks that wire off or it becomes dislodged and then we can't locate that water main. That would be, that's a call out we make so that we can locate our infrastructure in the future. So that would be a call out. And construction, like when I compare our warranty compared to your car warranty, you have to think about that car going down this You've seen it on the news and other movies and stuff that car rolling down that assembly line. Everything's perfect, they have robots, they have perfect. I mean everything is machined to fit together, engineered perfectly, so and you have that warranty period and anyone who's bought a car knows that like it seems like within the first two months you get a like it's similar to a punch list, right, so you get a recall and then you have to take it in and get it fixed.

Speaker 3:

So think about how construction takes place Out here on the street. You know it's open Every. The environment is different all the time. Weather is changing, conditions always change. You never know what you're going to get into when you start opening up the ground. So, yeah, things go wrong. So that's our process to have that. We go into initial warranty when we accept it at first. Then it goes into a two-year warranty period where that infrastructure gets to be used. Hopefully, you know that water main is being tested, sewer lines, storm you know everything's being tested and that has to. Then we re-inspect at a year and nine months. So at that two-year point, once we have you know if we have additional concerns or anything like that, we can call that out within that two-year warranty period. And then the contractor needs to go back and make us make repairs and we inspect those again and make sure that when that project is, when that infrastructure is delivered, that it's working properly.

Speaker 2:

And then obviously, once that two-year period is up, then it's a city asset and it's up to the city to maintain.

Speaker 3:

That's why that warranty period is so crucial. Yeah, so that when it is delivered, we've already tested it and we get high-quality infrastructure that we know is going to work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think and we're going into misconceptions in our next question, but I think this is a common one that you see work being done again and you're like, well, they were just here, they just did this work. What's going on? Often it's because something has failed in that two-year warranty period. Absolutely, that's yeah, and so with that I'll just segue into do you have any other, beyond that one, misconceptions or other info that you want? You want to help explain to folks?

Speaker 3:

For sure and I. It's a misconception. Now it hasn't always been this way. In the past, you know, inspectors were not looked upon as being helpful. They were looked upon as coming out and telling you what you did wrong. Basically, and that's what we're trying to change here in Arvada we are. It starts with the pre-construction meeting and we go into that pre-construction meeting providing them everything they need to get this project delivered successfully. That includes we'll provide them documentation of exactly what we're going to be looking for at initial warranty, at final warranty and throughout the inspection process, and we we really try to foster that collaboration. It's our goal to get that project delivered as well. We have plenty of work on our plate. We try to knock it off and we want these projects to run smoothly and less impact to the community.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think we haven't said this too. People don't realize you are out there every day. You're a 10-person team and you're inspecting the construction actively throughout the day to every project that's out there in the world. And when we get a call at City Hall about something and I don't know what's going on, the first people I'm asking are inspectors, because you guys are literally seeing everything. So, just adding to that, that's a piece of the partnership too. I think there Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

And that open communication. If you're around inspectors, you notice that their phones are ringing regularly a lot yeah, and text messages. You'll hear their text messages going off because we want to be ahead of whatever you're doing. So ask us Like we're here to help and we've probably seen it, you know, multiple times just recently with different contractors. We may know a better method of getting to the end product that we want. So, yeah, we are so helpful and it didn't used it's not always been that way, it used to be that they would dread to see the inspector come out and some companies still do. But in the end they're usually very grateful, shaking our hand, and very thankful for all the help that we've provided throughout the project.

Speaker 2:

And then one final follow-up before we move on to trivia. Which I'm looking forward to is technology has probably impacted everyone's industry, obviously, but yours is no exception. Now you'll have tablets I think it sounds like on site, and it shows you everything that's supposed to be underground. But that's a different story from 50, 60 years ago, when everything was pen and paper. How is that sort of contrast, how does it play out in a real-life project? And some surprises, I would imagine, when you kind of dig underground and see what you find out.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and we have Surface Pros that we use, so it's just like a laptop. We can put it in that mode and we can use it as a tablet as well. We're on them all day long out there. It's such a great tool because we have access to all of our maps, our standards, the prints, everything real time right there. It's also how we document things, so we would go back and look at how we used to document, and it's still in my office to this day. There's a plan set there. We hold it up and we're looking at it. It's covered in a coffee stain, but that's the real thing. That's how it used to be. So you have to try to figure out how that ink is blended with that coffee and figure out what's going on to read that plan. So now we use again.

Speaker 3:

We partner with Community and Economic Development and we came up with our own way of marking up construction plans. We use Bluebeam. So it's pretty high tech. We've customized our own tool sets within Bluebeam and it's almost real time. We mark them up daily, so it's about as close to real time as you can get. So, as a water mains going in, we're marking that up. We're given footages If we need to, if we need to make changes. Right, we need to move that water main five feet to the east. That's noted in Bluebeam and in-house we can see that, so engineers can see that as it as the project's being built, they can pull that up on our track it system where we upload it from Bluebeam.

Speaker 3:

And one of the cool things really too is and the contractors, developers, really love is when they do get callouts or punch lists. We have it, they can just click. It's a real simple document to use. They click on that call out. It's hyperlinked to that plan set where we've made that documentation and it shows them exactly what it is on that plan set. So there's no confusion or anything. Um, it's, it's really, it's really been helpful and well received by the developers and contractors as well, because then there's little to no confusion. I mean, we did all the work for you, yeah, sure, and it's right there at your fingertips. So the technology piece of that for us moving forward is huge. You know, 20 years from now, when somebody's looking back because it's coming up on its service life and trying to figure out what happened, now they don't have to look back at that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's no guessing anymore.

Speaker 3:

Try to figure out that plan set with the coffee stain on it. Don't want coffee stains. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, I'm going to move us into some trivia. All right, we're talking construction here. Okay, so our only rule is if you know the answer you have to try and let the other person see if they can guess. If they don't know it, if you both know it, just go for it. Okay, so we're talking. Construction Inspectors work in construction zones and on city roads. When was the first road paved in Arvada?

Speaker 2:

I don't know this, do you?

Speaker 3:

I don't. I believe it's Wadsworth.

Speaker 1:

No, no Okay.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to go. I'm not going to name a name, but I'll say like 1958.

Speaker 3:

I'll go 1940.

Speaker 1:

1921. Wow, and it was that's when they first started paving Grandview Avenue. So I don't know if maybe Wadsworth, because it's technically a state road. I didn't look at that as far as city-owned roads. It was Grandview Avenue and it was gravel and then they started paving it. How many curb ramps did the city replace in 2024? A lot.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to go with like 245. That's a lot. It's probably too many.

Speaker 3:

All the numbers are running together now over the years. I know this too. One specific year I'm going to go with 1,000.

Speaker 1:

No, you did have a year where there was close to 1,000.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but that was not last year. No, it was the year before actually 386 is the number I have. That was 2023.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then if Jim doesn't know this one, he's fired. So I didn't know this. I learned this last week when I was asking the inspectors to give me trivia questions. There are different types of underground utility lines that are distinguished from each other with different colors, and so what color is used to distinguish irrigation lines? Blue, depict it.

Speaker 2:

It's got to be blue. It's not blue. No.

Speaker 1:

Drinking water is blue, so irrigation.

Speaker 3:

So you're on the right. Yeah, you're on the right track.

Speaker 1:

What.

Speaker 3:

Green, that would be sanitary.

Speaker 1:

Nope, all right, jim, give it to us. Keep going One more.

Speaker 2:

Yellow is probably electricity Gas, gas it's not red because, that's too important. What's?

Speaker 3:

left White. White is what we use to call out stuff as an inspector. Pink is infrastructure. Orange I mean fiber optics. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's all the colors Purple. Okay, there we go. Purple, it is, yeah, I didn't realize there was that many different colors for all the.

Speaker 3:

So when you see those colors out on the ground, that's helpful, like helpful information. As a homeowner, you know yeah, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they have meaning. Yeah, you can Google it.

Speaker 2:

The last thing you want to do is replace some irrigation line as a homeowner right.

Speaker 3:

Well, you definitely don't want to be thinking that yellow mark out there is irrigation, yeah, so it's good to know the colors, yep.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, jim, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

As a reminder, we'd love to hear from our listeners. You can stay in touch by texting us using the link at the top of each episode and you can also reach out via email at podcast at arvadaorg. We love hearing your feedback about what you enjoy, what you'd like to see differently, episode ideas, questions and more Upcoming events section. Now we have our final Movies Around Town event. It's Beetlejuice.

Speaker 2:

Beetlejuice coming up on Friday, october 3rd at Michael Northey Park. This is a rescheduled event that was originally in July but it got postponed because of the weather. Make sure you get there early to participate in our costume contest. Enjoy live music by Waiting for a Name that's the name of the band Starting at 6 pm, followed by the movie at 7.15. Next up we have Marge Roberts Park. The park overhaul project is almost complete and we'll be hosting a ribbon-cutting celebration coming up on Tuesday, october 7th, from 4 to 5 pm. This is an all-ages event, so be sure to bring your kids check out the new park. We'll have an ice cream truck out there. This park's located just north of Lutz Sports Complex, off Miller Street and 58th Avenue.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then the city does an annual community survey, and that is every year in October.

Speaker 1:

So that survey is open to all residents now and it helps track satisfaction with city services and help define priorities that our community are looking for, and so that's arvadasurveycom. And then our Snow Buddies program is the program that matches residents who are unable to shovel snow from their sidewalks and driveways with a volunteer, and so we're encouraging folks to apply and volunteer for that program. It's at arvadagov slash snow buddies. And then, finally, we have a new city deputy city manager, allison Sheck, and she started September 15th as Dawn was promoted into the city manager role, and she comes to us from the city of Wheat Ridge and is a longtime city resident of Arvada, and so there's a press release we'll link to on the website if you want to learn more about her. And then thank you again to our guest today, jim Greer. Be sure to listen to our next episode. We will be speaking with Amanda Gonzalez, the Jefferson County clerk and recorder. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services.

Speaker 2:

Today's fun fact is last year, municipal inspectors for the city of Arvada completed over 10,000 inspections with a team of 10 inspectors.

Speaker 1:

Oh.