{"id":4379,"date":"2015-02-10T23:40:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T23:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/?p=4379"},"modified":"2016-08-22T23:03:49","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T23:03:49","slug":"seismic-retrofitting-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/seismic-retrofitting-san-francisco","title":{"rendered":"Seismic retrofitting in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"seismic-damage\"In 2013, the City of San Francisco launched the “Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit<\/a>” program as part of a multi-year initiative to retrofit older, more disaster prone buildings in San Francisco.\u00a0Buildings are split into four tiers based on the relative urgency associated with the retrofitting work (e.g. Tier 1 includes buildings with educational, assembly or residential care uses). With the looming deadline for Tier 1 buildings to submit their plans to the city, we decided to take a closer look to see how the market was responding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From 2000 – 2014, our classifier was able to identify 1,946 building permits in San Francisco referencing seismic retrofit work.\u00a0Plotted over time, we see a clear jump in activity in 2014. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"permits-over-time\"<\/p>\n

A break-down of permitting by property type, seems to be a good indicator that the City’s program is having an effect.<\/p>\n

\"permits-by-property-type\"<\/p>\n

Apartments fall into ‘Tier 2″ of the city’s program (buildings containing 15 or more dwelling units). Although the Tier 2 deadline for permit application is September 2016, it would seem that a couple hundred buildings have jumped out ahead of the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To get a sense for the financial impact of this activity, we looked at the distribution\u00a0of job valuations for seismic retrofit permits across the time series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"price-distribution\"<\/p>\n

With a median valuation of $50k, the already increasing demand for seismic retrofit work bodes well for the contractors offering these services in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Update (2\/13\/15)<\/em> – We were asked to examine how the soft story program may influence pricing for seismic retrofitting, so we examined the price distribution for apartments in 2014 – the class of building most influenced by the policy. Interestingly enough, we saw the median job value drop to $40k (20% below the 15-year median for seismic retrofitting). This tempers the 128% year-over-year growth in total permits issued and would suggest that the change in total annual expenditure may be closer to 100%. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"price-distribution-2\"<\/p>\n

Here are the 10 most active seismic retrofitting contractors over the past 15 years (based on permits issued in San Francisco).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Contractor<\/th>\nHeadquarters<\/th>\nPermits in SF<\/th>\nTotal job valuation<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1. Northern Sun Associates<\/a><\/td>\nSouth San Francisco, CA<\/td>\n\u00a056<\/td>\n$1.8 million\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2.\u00a0Seismic Retrofitters<\/a><\/td>\nSan Francisco, CA<\/td>\n\u00a041<\/td>\n$18 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3.\u00a0West Coast Premier Construction<\/a><\/td>\nOakland, CA<\/td>\n\u00a032<\/td>\n$13 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4.\u00a0Nabi Construction & Engineering<\/a><\/td>\nSan Francisco, CA<\/td>\n\u00a023<\/td>\n$9.8 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5.\u00a0QSE Construction<\/a><\/td>\nSan Francisco, CA<\/td>\n\u00a019<\/td>\n$2.2 million\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6.\u00a0Sincere Construction Company<\/a><\/td>\nBrisbane, CA<\/td>\n\u00a017<\/td>\n$4.3 million\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7.\u00a0Matrix Seismic Corp<\/a>\u00a0<\/td>\nMission Viejo, CA<\/td>\n\u00a016<\/td>\n$18 million\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8.\u00a0Artisana Painting<\/a><\/td>\nSan Francisco, CA<\/td>\n\u00a015<\/td>\n$16.4 million\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9. BAI Construction
<\/a><\/td>\n		Emeryville, CA<\/td>\n\u00a013<\/td>\n$22 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10.\u00a0Plant Construction Company<\/a><\/td>\nSan Francisco, CA<\/td>\n\u00a012<\/td>\n$1.2 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

[box]If you’re interested in a seismic retrofit and would like some hiring advice, you can chat with our resident contractor by e-mailing him at andrew (at) buildzoom.com. If you’re interested in learning more about the data, you can contact me directly at jiyan (at) buildzoom.com.\u00a0[\/box]\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2013, the City of San Francisco launched the “Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit” program as part of a multi-year initiative to retrofit older, more disaster prone buildings in San Francisco.\u00a0Buildings are split into four tiers based on the relative urgency associated with the retrofitting work (e.g. Tier 1 includes buildings with educational, assembly or residential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}