History And Issues In The Development Of Facade Ordinance Inspections

Hammurabi, fabled ruler of the ancient Middle East, detailed one for Babylon (Iraq) in 1700 BC. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. These laws were, literally, carved in stone.

It would take another 3600 years before a non-seismic zone facade ordinance in the United States appeared. A bit later, if more civilized.

The first enacted facade ordinance in the United States was in Chicago in 1976. That law, however, was repealed due to a technicality almost immediately and the city did not get around to a second effort until 1996. It was New York that enacted the first and longest continuous facade ordinance in 1980. At present, only 9 major cities in the US have facade ordinance. That group includes: Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Philadelphia is the latest addition to this elite group of municipalities who have seen the light that emerged from the Middle Eastern desert almost 4 centuries ago. The Philadelphia facade ordinance was passed by City Council on Feb. 4, 2010 and signed into law on Feb. 17th, 2010 by Mayor William Nutter.


The universal antecedent to facade ordinance passage in these cities was the injury or death of pedestrians from falling pieces of buildings. It has been estimated that loose masonry falls off a building somewhere in the United States every three weeks. With that sobering statistic in mind, as well as the even grimmer statistic that 49 such failures had killed 30 people and injured 81 during the late 1990s, it is stunning that only 9 of the nations cities have facade ordinance. There are over 30 US cities with populations exceeding half a million and more than 100 high rise office buildings (www.emporis.com).

Even these existing facade ordinance vary tremendously in stringency. Some simply require remote visual inspection with scopes or binoculars, while the more aggressive demand close-up, hands on inspections with swings or scaffolding, as well as intrusive techniques to determine hidden conditions. National standards for facade ordinance inspection didnt begin to emerge until 2005, when, in an attempt to bring some order and consistency to this emerging industry, ASTM International, the international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary technical standards for a wide range of materials and services, passed a set of updated recommendations regarding facade ordinance inspections known as ASTM E2270 - 05 Standard Practice for Periodic Inspection of Building Facades for Unsafe Conditions. This standard was quickly followed over the next several years with standards that drilled down into the various facets of facade ordinance inspection: ASTM E1105 -00 Standard Test Method for Field Determination of Water Penetration (2008), ASTM E2018-08 Guide for Property Condition Assessments, ASTM E2128 -01a Standard Guide for Evaluating Water Leakage of Building Walls (2009), and ASTM C1401 -09a Standard Guide for Structural Sealant Glazing.

The development of these facade ordinance standards were driven by several conflicting needs and desires. Too tough a standard, with a concomitant expense, would generate a backlash amongst building owners and municipalities and scuttle the effort. Nonetheless, the obvious need for more stringent building inspection was overwhelming, as it became a life-or-death public safety issue. The qualifications of those performing facade ordinance inspections were also a concern, as well as the impact of new regulations on historic buildings.

As facade ordinance have spread, they contributed to a need for a new specialty within the structural engineering world: facade engineering. While much of this new discipline is focused on the emerging hi-performance, low impact envelopes of modern high-rise structures, a corollary need emerged for engineers with an understanding of facade physics as it relates to building aging, environmental weathering, long-term structure movement, material interaction and failure mechanisms and symptoms. The success of facade ordinance inspections relies on having such a professional, combined with practices that will fully and reliably ascertain the condition of a facade and its appurtenances. As of this date, there are no state-sanctioned tests or licensing for facade ordinance inspectors in any of the cities with existing ordinances, though a licensed architect or engineer is usually required. The industry consensus, though, is that a specialized licensing regime is only a matter of time.


facade ordinance inspection has evolved into two levels, which are used sequentially. A review of service history and maintenance regimes is usually the first order of business in a facade ordinance inspection. A General Inspection usually then follows, defined as a visual-only observation at a distance greater than 6 feet from the facade. Magnification in the guise of scopes or binoculars is a normal part of this level of inspection, as well as video or photographic documentation. Detailed Inspection consists of physical manipulation and testing of the facade and its components using adjacent roofs, ladders, telescoping boom-lifts, industrial rope access, or, most frequently, using drop-scaffolding. Physical probes, ultra sound, cutting and drilling and fiber-optic borescopes, among other facade ordinance inspection techniques, are used to find damage and determine underlying causes in the substrate or facade/structural system interface.

Cutting edge technologies include the use of ground penetrating radar to non-destructively image historic structures and the City-Climber, a robot developed by a team at the City College of New York to provide a safe, less-expensive alternative to drop-scaffold, rope or boom inspections.

The findings of the General and Detailed Inspections are then analyzed and a report is prepared, usually for both the owner/manager and municipal building authority, as the final deliverable of the facade ordinance inspection process.


facade ordinance inspection is a field in its infancy. Combining science, engineering, forensics, observational skills and creativity, a new discipline is emerging that will have broad public safety implications and likely robust growth.