Charleston, SC Building Safety: Building Inspections (2026)

Sec. 7-5 imposes a duty on the chief building official to personally inspect or cause to be inspected all buildings erected throughout the city, and separately authorizes inspection of any building already standing that appears to the official to be dangerous, dilapidated, unhealthy, or unsanitary, a broader trigger than new construction alone. That authority sits alongside Sec. 7-6, which gives the chief building official jurisdiction to enforce the city's building laws generally, and Sec. 7-4, which places the chief building official and staff administratively within the inspections division of the Department of Public Service.

Sec. 7-3 establishes the chief building official position itself and doubles that role as the city's public safety and housing officer under Sec. 7-92. Read together, these sections give one official continuous authority over a building from the point construction is inspected through any later point at which the structure's condition draws a dangerous-building inspection, with the same office empowered to act on both the front and back end of a building's life in the city.