Seismic Upgrade:
Are you a UMB?
Seismic upgrades for UMB’s (Unreinforced Masonry Building, a building with any brick structure, i.e. one wall brick and 3 wood walls is a UMB) are required under the San Francisco Building Code, item 104f, passed in 1990 after the Loma Preita earthquake. All UMB construction must be complete by 2006.

Basically 104f requires that all UMB’s in San Francisco be retrofit in order to withstand an earthquake of 8.0 magnitude. The City surveyed the existing buildings and counted up about 2000 UMB’s.

As part of 104f, the City created (4) risk categories based on a combination of criteria: location, use, soils, occupancy load and a few others.

Risk Category 1 Buildings: about 75 buildings, to be complete by 1996.

Risk Category 2 Buildings: about 300 buildings, to be complete by 1998 (could have been 1997, there are various exceptions and extensions available).

Risk Category 3 Buildings: about 1200 buildings, to be complete by 2004.

Risk Category 4 Buildings: about 425 buildings, to be complete by 2006 (mostly smaller residential type structures requiring minor work).

An ADA tune-up is needed more often than not but is not required with the seismic upgrade. If done, the ADA tune-up is included as part of the scope of work.

Other Types of Construction:

Non UMB’s that are more than 20% remodeled often require seismic upgrading. Seismic upgrades for these types of structures are assessed building by building. For example, a poured in place concrete structure to be 100% renovated might not require a seismic upgrade, while a steel frame high-rise structure which is renovated 100% will be required to undergo a full seismic upgrade.

Upgrades for these types of buildings vary and the requirements are much harder to pin down.

Base Building Shell & Core:

Includes (if required) exits, entry, stairs, elevators, elevator call buttons, elevator lobbies, landing at each door per ADA requirements, restrooms (ADA compliant of course), path of travel (how one gets out of the building, related to exits, and how one gets to the restroom, related to ADA), door swings & clearances, drinking fountains, ramps, parking, handrails, thresholds, public telephone, accessibility signage, fire rated demising walls (a demising wall separates uses and/or tenants, a partition wall separates a space within a tenant space), exit signage, etc. This list can go on and on.

Essentially base building shell and core work is all the stuff in a building that is not related to the tenant build-out.

ADA Tune-Up:

Almost always occurs when doing Base Building Shell & Core work. See above.

Tenant Improvement (TI’s):

Basically, any improvements that the tenant wants, that does not fall into any of the other categories. TI work usually revolves around tenant specific finishes, electrical, and furniture.