When structures collapse, Jennifer Bridge’s phone rings.
Often, it is family wanting insight from Bridge, an associate professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering. She is a well-regarded expert in structural engineering, so that phone also rings with state officials and building industry leaders.
Such was the case in June 2021 when the 12-story Champlain Towers South collapsed into a jagged crumble of concrete, steel and suffering in Surfside, Fla., north of Miami Beach. The beachside disaster killed nearly 100 people and injured dozens. Residents were buried in the rubble, and America watched in horror as rescue missions turned into recovery missions within days.
“Surfside was devastating,” Bridge said. “This should never have happened because we have so many processes in place. We have so many safety factors built into our engineering processes, whether it’s in the design, the construction or the oversight of the construction.”
Now, three years after the disaster, the UF researcher’s work has helped shape new legislation to improve and track building inspections for condominiums and co-ops. Following the Surfside collapse, Bridge’s inspection reviews and remedies have resulted in tangible changes in the way inspectors evaluate condos.
“The reaction I have to every structural failure is ‘This should never happen,’ obviously. If something like that happens, multiple things have gone wrong. It’s never just one thing.”
Jennifer Bridge, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering
Working with the Florida Building Commission (FBC), she contributed to consistent statewide inspection forms and educates industry leaders, state officials, building departments, inspectors and even condo owners about the changes.
The new Florida legislation tightens the window for inspections for condos and co-op buildings to 30 years after construction, then every 10 years statewide. Prior to the legislation, standards were not consistent. In Miami-Dade (including Surfside) and Broward counties, the standard required inspections after the first 40 years, then every 10 for all buildings.
Condo associations also must complete structural-integrity studies and set aside funds for maintenance and repairs.
As part of the education campaign, more than 1,800 attend Bridge’s webinars about building code changes, inspections, and the new forms designed to establish consistency and thorough inspections. She has conducted three webinars so far and is set for three more through November with inspectors (private and municipal), building departments, condo associations and owners, and lawyers representing homeowners or cities and counties.
The changes were not universally lauded, as increased procedures require increased costs, which condo associations pay. The new inspection processes likely will strain some smaller municipalities with smaller staffs.
No matter. Bridge’s job is structural safety. The project was not about Surfside but rather a comprehensive review of building inspections and vulnerabilities in the system.
“What’s working? What’s not working? Where are the bottlenecks?” she said. “The reaction I have to every structural failure is ‘This should never happen,’ obviously. If something like that happens, multiple things have gone wrong. It’s never just one thing.”
The first step was examining those existing processes, with Bridge and her team analyzing about 600 inspection reports from the 40-year inspection programs in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. “OK,” she said after the Surfside collapse, “let’s pump the brakes and look at how the programs we have in place are working.”
In reviewing those inspection programs, she focused on two areas:
1. How the programs operate at the jurisdictional level
“You have a large city with a lot of resources with an electronic system; they are on top of the records, and the files made sense,” Bridge said. “Then you have other cities who say, ‘We don’t know where those reports went’ or ‘We never followed up on those.’ They may not have known until I asked them. They were clearly not putting the resources toward it, maybe because they didn’t have the resources.”
Most counties were not following up at the county level.
Yet, after the Surfside collapse, “most jurisdictions were trying to improve processes and have been putting more measures in place to keep track of records and enforce the regulations,” she added. “We saw this in the second phase of our research; inspections seemed to be happening more quickly, and the reports were more detailed/comprehensive.”
2. Inspections
“They have these standard forms the inspectors were using, and I just saw such a wide variety in the quality, the completeness, the level of detail,” Bridge said. “I saw a lot of inspection reports with things that were kind of just blank. Or maybe a checkmark. You are supposed to evaluate the condition of that thing, not just put a checkmark because it is there.”
Not all inspection reports fell short. Some were quite detailed with pictures and diagrams. They varied greatly.
“If we saw an inspection report that did not say anything about the structure – good, bad or otherwise – we put that in a bucket that said, ‘Insufficient Information.’ And about 10 percent of the reports fell into that bucket,” Bridge said.
Bridge’s research has been essential for the state, said Mo Madani, director of the Florida Building Codes and Standards Office, which is part of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
“Her research has been used by [FBC] to come up with the inspection form,” Madani said. “The University of Florida – including Jennifer – has been in the forefront with research, especially in regard to buildings. Jennifer is one of the primary people I call.”
The new forms and inspections are not perfect, Bridge contends. She thinks some parts are too broad, and some parts are more subjective from the inspection side. At some point, she would like to see all the reports entered into a state database.
“There is really nothing cutting edge in this. Here’s a problem within a state,” she said. “How can I be part of the solution? And I don’t always agree with how they do things, but I would rather be in the inside trying to help.”
Also of note: Bridge is working with the American Society of Civil Engineers to create a nationwide standard for condition-assessment of existing buildings. Bridge serves as the vice chair for this committee.
“The result of this committee will be a minimum standard that can be adopted by various building codes,” she said. “By 2028, we hope to have the very first standard for the condition assessment of existing buildings.”