Anchorage officials want to keep private plan review rules but warn of a conflict

Anchorage's building official and engineering services manager are recommending that the Assembly keep, without an expiration date, the 2024 rules for a program that lets builders hire private engineers and architects to check their building plans instead of using city reviewers. In the same report, they warn that the arrangement creates a conflict of interest.

Building Official Greg Soule and Engineering Services Manager Daniel King made the recommendation in a report to the Assembly for its Oct. 20 meeting. Those 2024 rules, which opened the program to commercial projects, created a list of city-approved reviewers and required audits, are set to expire at the end of 2026. Keeping them would take a new ordinance.

Plan review is the step where a licensed engineer or architect checks a design against building codes before construction starts, a "second set of eyes," as the report puts it. For houses, the report says, those reviewers play a crucial role because residential designers don't need a license. In the year ending June 1, private reviewers handled 86 of 91 permits for new residential buildings in the city's building safety service area.

Who picks the reviewer

City code expects building owners to hire their reviewers. Instead, the report says, project managers or contractors typically recommend or choose them on the owner's behalf, based on how fast they work and whether they agree with the comments. "It behooves the third-party reviewer to limit the number of comments to maintain relationships with their clients and not necessarily to meet the letter of the code," the officials wrote. They added that some engineers have admitted knowingly submitting flawed drawings for city review and waiting for the city to catch the errors, so they wouldn't have to tell their clients no.

When the city audited 16 private reviews of home plans, nine passed structural review without corrections. Five needed corrections, and two failed, meaning they had substantial or life-safety problems. One of eight fire and life-safety reviews also failed. Separately, the report says one reviewer was responsible for "multiple egregious life-safety risks," including missing fire-resistive construction, that should have been caught. The city met with that reviewer and warned that approval could be revoked.

Right now, the building official relies on a code provision about fraudulent acts to act against reviewers who underperform. The officials want the Assembly to allow removal for "incompetence or lack of knowledge," still subject to appeal, so enforcement wouldn't require proving bad intent.

Few commercial takers

Opening the program to commercial projects was partly meant to ease the city's workload, the report says. Only eight of 540 commercial permits used it in the past year. The city's building safety section has been fully staffed since December 2025, and most permits now take three days or less per review cycle, down from nine at the peak of 2024's staffing shortage.