When to call the fire marshal

Q. I’m doing a retail store and plan to move in ASAP, but we made changes from the original plans and the inspector hasn’t said a word. Are as-built plans necessary to get my C of O, and should I call the fire marshal to get a separate inspection? Nobody representing the architect, contractor or building owner seems to know.

A. Good question. The reason you can’t seem to get an answer is because nobody wants to be responsible these days, any answer you get will be wrong, and many separate entities are involved in the approval process. Nassau County has one authority for approving fire safety equipment issues, and that’s the county fire marshal’s office. If they were the only authority, that would be the end of it, but your local Building Department is the official body that issues building permits. With 64 separate jurisdictions, from villages and towns to cities, each has its own authority to interpret state building codes and also to decide fire safety requirements for buildings in its jurisdiction.

But the fire marshals, the ones who carry guns, actually do have authority for fire safety equipment installations and strictly adhere to National Fire Protection Association and National Fire Safety codes. Because most local jurisdictions rarely confer with the fire marshal’s office, it makes the fire marshals seem like some kind of avoidable formality, at least by practice of most jurisdictions. The difficult part to understand is that no one I speak to knows when to involve the fire marshal’s office, even though it is required that plans be submitted and reviewed by them on every renovation of buildings other than residential. A building department will issue a permit with no mention of the fire marshal, leaving it to the building owner to find out — sometimes the hard, expensive way — that they were supposed to have submitted plans and gotten approval, separately, before starting work, at least according to the fire marshal’s office.