Electrical inspection delays
If anyone is developing right now in the Nashville area then you know about the major delays in getting inspections completed.
Everyone is complaining right now and asking for "hacks" on how to get inspections scheduled. There really aren't any. You just have to eat the holding costs for a month. Right now the delay is 3-4 weeks!!
Here is a response from council Courtney Johnson that I thought may be a helpful update:
"I’m acutely aware of the situation and so is Codes. State law changed a few years ago that made it nearly impossible to hire electrical inspectors. There is legislation at the state level now that would reverse that and is the long term answer for getting folks hired. The backlog is about 3 weeks. You CAN request a virtual inspection which happens much more quickly. Metro has tried everything, even hiring state approved inspectors from other counties to come in as a sun contractor to help but the state shut that down and also shut down our ability to accept engineer letters which we’ve done for years. I’m hopeful the state bill passed. I’ve also requested that the civil service commission look at those salaries we offer to make sure they are competitive - they’re not - so we need to rectify that. It will take some time but once the bill passes we’ll be able to do what we need to. I know it’s frustrating. My husband is a GC so he deals with it every day. Try to request a virtual inspection and then my advice - until we can get staffed up - is to request your inspection a bit early to mitigate. It’s not great and I wish I had a better answer. But we’re just as frustrated as builders are. Morale is quite low. But we’re working on it. I hope this helps a little."
I think Courtney is actually the council member for the district I'm in. Or at least she was. I did not know you could request a virtual inspection. How do you do that? I've been waiting on electrical to pass at a property for two and a half months now because the electrician failed it twice.
Courtney was right, they were allowing virtual inspections for a while, so long as the inspector doing it was licensed. According to what I was told by the lead of that division at the end of March this year, Metro put an end to(or atleast a hold on) allowing proxy electrical inspections. It's important to be sure that the folks on your development team (Contractor, Development Coordinator, and/or Realtor) have a good relationship with the good folks at codes/permits, and to leave contingency for these kind of hang-ups in your build timeline.
