Safety Assessment Program (SAP) Training

Disasters create terrible consequences, forcing people out of their homes into temporary shelters and closing down communities. While productive individuals sit idle in shelters, or even move away, local building inspectors struggle to evaluate building safety in hundreds or thousands of damaged structures.

 

Experience in dealing with threats like natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and explosions reveals that the number of total inspections reflecting nonstructural damage can be more than three times the number of red-tagged and yellow-tagged buildings. Most building departments do not have the ability to perform multitudes of such inspections in a short period of time, so a strong need exists to have a cadre of trained professionals available to assist local governments, along with a program to manage this cadre.

 

AIA New York State is offering a series of Safety Assessment Program Evaluator Trainings to train civil engineers, architects, and building inspectors to do field evaluations of buildings and other infrastructure for safety. This training is approved by the federal Department of Homeland Security for homeland security grant funding, and for CEUs through New York State Education Department Office of the Professionals.

 

This course certifies attendees as Building Evaluators in the California Safety Assessment Program (SAP). The program is managed by Cal EMA with cooperation from professional organizations, including the AIA. It utilizes volunteers and mutual aid resources to provide professional engineers and architects and certified building inspectors to assist local governments in safety evaluation of their built environment in the aftermath of a disaster. SAP is the preferred training standard of the AIA Disaster Assistance Program, which provides leadership, advocacy, and training to architects who are interested in volunteering their professional skills in times of crisis. This workshop will teach participants to conduct rapid damage assessments of structures affected by earthquakes, wind, and water. It also teaches the appropriate protocol for coordinating with emergency managers to limit professional liability. Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to consistently and safely assess structures for habitability and will receive a Building Evaluator license from the state of California.

 

Please be advised, the completion of the SAP training will not immediately qualify New York licensed architects as building evaluators for New York. Due to New York's lack of Good Samaritan legislation in place for architects, New York licensed architects will need to take New York's Department of State Code Enforcement Disaster Assistance Response (CEDAR) Program. As such, this course will also provide participants with next steps on how to register for the CEDAR program. 

 

Illya Azaroff, AIA, Founding Principal, +LAB architect PLLC
Timothy G. Boyland, AIA, Partner, v + b Architecture/Urban Planning, LLP

Verity Frizzell, AIA, LEED AP, Founder, Feltz & Frizzell Architects LLC
Mark Vinvent Kruse, AIA, Vice President/Architect, RMB