HB 372 — Tim Courtad, Pride One Construction (3/7/2022)
Summary
This is written testimony in support of House Bill 372, dated 3/7/2022, to the House Commerce and Labor Committee from Tim Courtad, President and Partner of Pride One Construction in Medina, OH. The firm describes itself as a mid-sized general contracting, construction management and development company that has completed over $1.5 billion in construction value. It says the bill would allow certain building inspection decisions to be appealed expeditiously at the contractor's cost and discretion. The testimony lists problems the firm says it has experienced, including delays from code discrepancies, a failed inspection over draft stopping requirements, differing inspectors, and 4-6+ months to obtain a full permit. It encourages the committee to vote the bill out.
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“HB 372 — Tim Courtad, Pride One Construction (3/7/2022).”
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3/7/2022
House Commerce and Labor Committee
RE: HB 372
Chair Stein, Vice Chair Johnson, Ranking Member Lepore-Hagan and Members of the
Committee:
My name is Tim Courtad, writing on behalf of Pride One Construction in Medina, OH to show
our collective support for House Bill 372.
Pride One Construction is a mid-sized firm offering General Contracting, Construction
Management, and Development services. Since our inception, we have completed over $1.5
billion in construction value, supported hundreds of local subcontractors, and worked with many
of the local building departments in the State of Ohio. Our support of House Bill 372 reflects
over thirty years of experience in the construction industry and what we feel would be a
tremendous opportunity to improve the lives of Contractors and Subcontractors amid increasing
burdens of workforce shortage, material delays, and continuing scrutinization.
House Bill 372 proposes a change to the building inspection process that would allow for certain
decisions to be appealed expeditiously at the Contractor’s cost and discretion. Current Ohio law
has a gap in the building inspection process that allows certain Ohio building departments to
impact projects through a lengthy rejection delay, causing great expense and creating negative
downstream effects on our Subcontractors with no ability to appeal such decisions in a timely
manner.
Specifically, we feel that House Bill 372 will help mitigate the following issues we have
experienced in recent years:
• Project delays resulting from code discrepancies between the Ohio Building Code and a
fully Permitted set of drawings which could have been avoided through an expedited
appeal by having a review board verify that Work was performed per Code despite such
not being reflected on the Permit drawings.
• Increased costs because of a failed inspection due to a building inspector’s
misinterpretation the Code’s draft stopping requirements. While the code was clear in
our favor, the Project constraints did not include a long delay for an appeal and forced us
to take on extra cost to avoid the delay.
• Discrepancies in how the Local Building Department inspector, the Local Fire
Department, the State Fire Marshal, and/or the State Elevator inspector interpret the
Code. There are often situations where these parties are not in agreement on life safety
requirements and compromises need to be made that impact our time and budget because
of not being able to appeal their decisions in a timely manner.
2211 Medina Road, Suite 100 • Medina, Ohio 44256
Phone: 330.239.6100 • Fax: 330.239.6200 www.prideoneconstruction.com
• Differing inspectors on a weekly, sometime daily, basis: One day an inspector would say
something was acceptable. The next day, a different inspector would come to the site and
red tag the same item that the previous inspector said was OK.
• Difficulties during the plan review process, including continuously addressing the same
comments with drawing revisions, having those items approved, but then receiving new
comments added on the review. This happened multiple times and even though we had a
conditional permit, we couldn’t achieve a full permit for 4-6+ months.
• Differing protocols from plan reviewers, including a lack of documentation. This can
cause confusion and delays for Contractors if conversations are not documented or
recorded properly.
We are in support of this Bill and believe that an expedited appeal process will give Contractors
the option of putting the fate of their Project in their own hands. We further believe that
implementation of this Bill will have a compounding effect on building inspections, resulting in
more accurate and timely inspections because of this check and balance on the current process.
Pride One Construction offers its full support of this bill and encourages this committee vote
House Bill 372 out of committee.
Tim Courtad
President and Partner
Pride One Construction
2211 Medina Rd. Suite 100
Medina, Ohio 44256
O: 330.485.0678
C: 330.310.9849
tcourtad@prideone.cc
2211 Medina Road, Suite 100 • Medina, Ohio 44256
Phone: 330.239.6100 • Fax: 330.239.6200 www.prideoneconstruction.com
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