The primary goal of the Building and Safety Division is to save lives. We are code and engineering public safety professionals for the “built environment.” A typical misperception is that saving lives is solely a function for the police or fire departments; however, they are reactive to situations which are imminent in nature and Building and Safety is proactive in manner when it comes to protecting lives. Our job is to make sure people do not perish in buildings due to faulty design and construction issues that cause building collapse, fire, electrocution, mechanical system related asphyxiation, and poisoning from contaminated water. Our community can be confident that the homes they sleep in and the businesses they frequent are free of these hazards and meet the highest code and safety standards in the world.

While fulfilling our paramount goal, we will demonstrate honesty, integrity, and fairness in all aspects of our responsibilities. We work diligently to be informative and extremely helpful to all of our customers. Each member of our team will strive to understand our customer’s goals and deliver superior service in an effort to help guide you to build safely and in a timely manner. The successful completion of your project is important to the City of Calabasas, and we will work with you to that end.

To ensure projects are built safe, we naturally use our code knowledge to “write corrections” pointing out the deficiencies of a design or construction work; however, we also use our knowledge in a proactive manner and we strive to advise our customers on how to spot and solve these deficiencies before they ever arise. To handle these very diverse tasks, the Building and Safety Division is segregated into four distinct sections – the Permit Center, Inspections, Plan Check and Code Enforcement. Each Section’s mission is to provide quality service in a manner that is comprehensive and efficient.

The permit center is usually the first line of contact for our customers and they typically respond to counter, telephone, and email inquiries and guide our customers through the permit application and permit issuance process. Our permit team is also responsible for maintaining the permanent permit records that are associated with every property in the City.

Once the permit center accepts permit applications along with the associated construction plans, the material is routed to the Plan Check team. Our plan check team has an impeccable turn-around time for project reviews and when the review of proposed projects are completed, the files are routed back to the permit center who then issue the building permits.

After permits are issued for projects, the inspection team then conducts field inspections of construction work for compliance with not only the building codes and the approved construction plans, but they are also responsible for enforcing various requirements associated with planning, zoning, and property maintenance as outlined in the City’s Municipal Code.

The Building and Safety’s Code Enforcement Division diligently enforces the City’s Municipal Code for all City Departments. The Municipal Code is designed by City Council members to preserve and enhance our community’s safety, appearance, economic stability, land use policies, and preservation of the standards for quality of life that residents and businesses expect. Our Code Enforcement officers strive to utilize education and outreach to facilitate voluntary compliance with codes and other laws. Code Enforcement’s success rate for voluntary compliance is extremely high; however, when we are unable to obtain voluntary compliance, the Code Enforcement team is also the liaison and partner to the City Prosecutor’s Office. Advanced enforcement remedies with the City Prosecutor also include both civil and criminal actions.