February 2, 2017, meeting of government did it and oversight committee. We have supervisor aaron peskin and supervisor london breed . I would like to recognize leo daisies and from sfgovtv. Org. They provide transcripts to the public. Madam chair, would you like to make any announcements . Yes, please silence all cell phones and any copies of your speech should be submitted to the clerk. Thank you, madam clerk. I have acknowledged all in todays meeting. Please call item 1. Clerk hearing on existing building standards in seismic safety zones, including infill and waterfront neighborhoods; and requesting the department of building inspection to report. Supervisor jane kim thank you, this item is to continue to discuss the structural safety concerns at 301 Mission Street. Will for clarification purposes, todays hearing is related to file no. 161299, a motion passed by the board to issue a subpoena for professor jack moiler. A Structural Engineer who designed the 301 mission as a third party in 2006. I understand that madam clerk. Supervisor peskin would you like to make a comment. Supervisor aaron peskin this is a series of hearings not only with regard to 301 but the issue of large buildings and Safety Standards particularly in the Downtown Core where we have a lot of party that are bay lands. I am very pleased that professor maile has joined us today and we have a number of questions that we are seeking to ask him in his role as one of the peer reviewers as well as the peer reviewer of a similar project that was not built at 80 natoma which was the issue of this body. After the oath is administered i have questions that are meant to be friendly. We are trying to figure out the bottom of this as to who knew what and when. Thank you. Well bring up the clerk of the board to administer the oath. Mr. Maile, please stand at the podium. Prepare by raising your right hand and say i do when i finish the oath. You do solemnly state that the testimony you are giving here in the city of San Francisco shall be the truth and nothing but the truth. I do. Supervisor jane kim supervisor aaron peskin let me say that professor maile is in the highest regard and i know director tom speaks highly of mr. Maile and have heard from others in the industry that mr. Maile is highly regarded. I want to start with an introduction. If you would give us a little bit of your background as to your qualifications and educational experience, awards, just a a little bit of your bona fided. Sure. My name is jack maile. My main position as a Structural Engineer at university in california. I am interested not only in teaching and research but Development Issues and divine guidance and as a consequence of that have been involved in developing some Design Guidelines that are affirm widely used in Tall Buildings today. I served on several panels related to Tall Buildings in this city as well as other cities. Im currently the chair of the american constitute Building Code committee which involves the National Standards for buildings of all reinforced concrete. As to awards, i dont want to go on too long about things. But locally i have been involved with the Structural Engineers association of Northern California where i was designated some years ago as an honorary member. Im also affiliated of course with the statewide Structural Engineers association where i was elected to category of fellow. And im a member of the National Academy of engineering. And a license state Structural Engineer . Im a licensed state civil engineer. The Structural Engineer license is one that requires and additional examination and qualifying years of Structural Engineering practice under a registered and Structural Engineer. Because im a professor at uc berkeley, i dont qualify for that examination. I never took that exam. Thank you for your background. As you indicated you have been a peer reviewer in San Francisco and other locals. And at a certain point prior to the 301 Mission Project which of course is the subject of great interest and concern in so far as it is undeniably not performing as to the specifications that were setforth, but prior to the 301 Mission Street project, you were a peer reviewer on the 80 natoma project. I wanted to as start with a little bit of background for our edification. How does a peer review work, where is the client, where does the product go and what is your responsibility. If you want to give us your gala of the peer review. Because peer review has developed over the years and formalized in ab 282 and ab 083 in the city and county of San Francisco. Our administrative bull tins from the department of buildings inspection. Going back to 80 natoma and the Mission Project that was pretty early in the development of formal base design for Tall Buildings. When i say Performance Based design, what i mean is that the design involves the structural system or a kind of material or a new configuration of the materials that is different from what is prescribed in the Building Code. So the design in such a case is done by a more advanced Structural Analysis in Foundation Analysis sometimes for the building. And the we can go back to the example of this building which is today which is one of the earliest in San Francisco which the design or the redesign and retrofit of this building is seismic isolate ors. Those kind of developments were covered by the Building Code but not in depth that enabled the Building Department to conduct a review without outside expertise. The same applies to the powers going back to 80 natoma not including 301 mission, but many other high rise towers are being performed by this design procedure in which the analysis are outside the prescribed methods of the Building Code. The city typically will bring in a seismic Peer Review Panel. The panel usually has a scope of work that is restricted to seismic design because thats where the main difference with the prescriptive code revisions lies. It at times will also include design for wind because of the similarities between wind force and seismic force in terms of what systems are resisting those actions. But the scope is usually a seismic scope. And in current practice, the peer reviews are generally structured with a chairperson. The chairperson i think is required in this city to be practicing and registered Structural Engineer. There is typically a geotechnical engineer or engineer with seismology background who is skilled in issues related to the Foundation Design. Geotechnical parameters, earthquake ground motion. And then there is generally an academic who is brought in. The academic is not so much to bring an academic perspective, but to bring to bear the Specialized Knowledge that might be required to understand the design of a particular building. So, i might be brought in as an academic reviewer or as a reviewer are academic background as my related expertise in concrete construction. In steel, someone might be brought in with a structural steel kind of background. And the review is is in the city and county of San Francisco. Lets step back, you had many questions in your question. One of the questions was how is the Peer Review Panel assembled. Its been done in various ways. I have never been part of the assembly process. I think in the past there is very often been discussions among the Building Department, the Structural Engineer of record and perhaps the developer. And i think such discussions are not inappropriate. I think they are appropriate because the Structural Engineer of record has the best knowledge of going into the project of what are the special conditions that have to be addressed in this peer review. And also the peer reviewers and the Structural Engineer of record have to work extensively over a period of 612 months typically in the review process. So its good that they have some rapport in doing the work. But eventually the city makes the final decision. The Building Department makes the decision who the reviewers should be. Each of the reviewers are contacted. Do you have Time Available and do you have time to spend on this activity and do you have a related context to this project. That is the more recent question. In this city, the practice has been that the individual peer reviewers write a proposal to the developer, and the developer in some cases will take that proposal and simply sign it and date it and say approved. In other cases, depending on the Corporate Structure of the developer, they may have attorneys that rewrite everything and it coming back in some different form. So the process varies. But, i think invariably in the past, the contract has been between the individual peer reviewers and the developer. The responsibility for working is between generally its between the peer reviewers and the engineer of record and commonly involve the representative of the department of building and safety in San Francisco to review various details. We go through what a typical review entails. But invariably each project has special conditions that the peer reviewers have the skills identified to ask questions to identify modifications, to check spot some of the details the engineer is proposing and make changes in the design because the design isnt suitable for the performance intent. The performance responsibility is a very serious one. I know i take it very seriously. And the reporting is strictly to the department of Building Department of San Francisco. All responsibilities for writing letters for reporting go to the representative of the Building Department. Its really a safety first kind of mentality. Although the developer maybe paying compensated for the time spent and a lot of the work is between the Peer Review Panel and the Structural Engineer of record. The responsibility is really the city of San Francisco. The reporting is done there and thats where my allegiance has always been except when the developer decides to take his or her independent inhouse peer review and the report goes back to the developer. In the case of 80 natoma, what was the relationship . With 80 natoma, it was one of the first of the high rise Performance Based designs to come into this city that utilized what we would call a hoer only, all the seismic resistance is contained in the elevator hoer. No moment frame. When they consider the height, that falls out of the prescription for the Building Code and the Building Department would invoke a peer review. 80 natoma was the first of those. So 80 natoma was a 3person review panel. I was one of the members. It was way early in the process. I was the chair. You were the chair which was interesting because you were not a licensed structural but playing the role of the academic but you were the chair . Right, back then the rule to be a Structural Engineer wasnt in print anywhere. So i served as a chair in more than one such panel, but in the last 10 years i have not chaired a single Peer Review Panel anywhere and thats fine with me. So there was a practicing Structural Engineer, license Structural Engineer who was a member of the Peer Review Panel, and there is a geotechnical engineer who was also involved with that panel. We were hired by, i think the developer was jack myers. That is correct. I havent heard the name in a while, but he was the developer in that case. So i presume our contract was through him and the maintenance of record was clav chic and ron was the i dont remember the plan checker. The plan checker was tom huey. Quite possible. Thats how that project was set up. I can give my own version of the firsthand history of what happened there. Going back to the role of educators in peer reviewers, back to the case, the peer reviewers were paid by the developers, but in the case of 80 natoma, your duty, i dont want to put words in your mouth was related to the department of building and safety even though your client was the developer . Yes. The duty is really to the city, but the reporting line was the Building Department, yes. And then relative to the findings that happened in the 80 natoma case relative to a concrete building albeit without moment frames, but within a similarly situated geotechnical area, the substraight is very very similar, but a few hundred feet away, what was the Peer Review Panels determination . The Peer Review Panel was, its a complicated logic determination. Its not a thumbs up or thumbs down. Its a very gold project. The peer review was satisfied with the design of this project. Lets talk about the history. Okay. I dont know, supervisor peskin if you saw the exhibits that i brought in today. The reason we started late is because they were copied and as i have been trying to speak i have been looking at them. But yes, we have them. These are all of my documents of these projects. They are fairly old projects so the number of documents is limited. But for ease of reference, i put a little exhibit number on the first page of each of these. One of them is jpn, my initials. Yes, that is the letter from dbi to you, as long as mr. Donny was part of that project. Before mr. Ladd and mit came involved. Mr. Vadoni became involved from the very beginning. I will point out some things of this letter in a moment. The project was under review. It being the first of these tall core only reviews. There was a lot of time spent going through the details of how the engineers were handling the design of the reinforced concrete system. There was as well although i am not an expert in Geotechnical Engineering. I recall that shaul vedanta was also with the text graphic issues early in those days. As i recall, they expected settlement in this building from the geotechnical engineers who had written a report based on this was that the expected longterm settlement was on the order of 5 inches. My understanding was that vadity was on the Peer Review Panel. I dont want to put words in his mouth. Just as we ended the peer review process something remarkable happened. Nothing like this has happened since i have been involved. If you turn to page 10, and look at what is contained here. Ken harrington is the city writing to verdana at berkeley saying we need another independent review because we have received these 15 reports. And the remarkable thing about this is that report no. 1 is the report of the technical engineering firm. There is a report no. 2 from me on behalf of the Peer Review Panel. On april 2nd. And then may 9, may 12, may 14, may 25, may 31, june 2nd, june 3rd, june 11th, june 14th, june 17th, june 24th. There is a series of 13 reports that came in from geotechnical engineers. I think they are all geotechnical engineers which, of course, told me something strange and different was going on with this project from anything that i have ever reviewed before because we never saw such interest. Somebody has hired all of these people, these experts, recognized experts to write reports. And i think the report that has been noted previously is one from professor whittle from mit, a recognized expert in geotechnical experience and also a professor ladd had written an independent report as well and had claimed the expected settlement was not 5 inches but 11 inches. Of course everyone was concerned including the panel. We asked shaw verdani to review the technical reviews of the project. I thought it was reports both by ladd and whittle which were very similar. To find out the source of the discrepancy five verses 11 inches. Shau went out and looked at the detail of the two sets of reports with different results. As i recall he cited two main sources of the discrepancy. The first one is a little complicated to explain, but if a soil is precompressed lets say by an over lying ice sheet which doesnt happen here, or by over lying soil sometime in the geo logic past. That soil is decreased and it compresses to a certain point with equilibrium of the soil and due to a process, that soil might be r