Chief Building Official Taking His New Role in Stride

With three months under his belt as Chief Building Official for Medina County, Dave Molnar is continuing to improve upon the successes from his predecessor, Chris Randles who left Medina County to be Summit County’s Chief Building Official. Molnar has been busy hiring great talent to fill the vacated positions created at the end of 2019 including a Building Inspector for residential and commercial projects to help cover the county’s geographic area and respond to time-critical inspection requests when they arise and an in-house Plans Examiner to fill Molnar’s previous position. The Plans Examiner will act as a back-up Building Official that can help answer customer questions and assist in the day-to-day operation. The Building Department is also continuing to try to improve on their “new” software. While the software has been live now for over a year, there are things that can be streamlined and improved upon. The Department is continuing to advance their use of technology to improve the services that are provided and explore new innovations.

Experience

Under Molnar’s direction, the Building Department has held consistent with a two to three day time on residential plan reviews and two weeks for commercial plan reviews in January. Molnar came to Medina County as a plans examiner in 2018. Although, he is not new to the role of Chief Building Official. He was the Chief Building Official for the City of Canton for five years with prior experience running his own architectural firm. The Building Department has continued to move in a positive direction under Molnar’s leadership which he attributes to the great team he has in the department.

Goals for Department

In discussing Molnar’s goals for the department, Molnar said “First, once we have an in-house plans examiner, I want to get our commercial plan review times back down to less than a week like we were when we were fully staffed. Second, I share the same passion for educating and developing our staff that Scott Miller and our Commissioners have. Information, codes, products and methods in our industry change constantly in order to have a safer and more efficient built environment and we want to be right there learning and developing so we can provide the best service to our customers and the people who live, work and visit Medina County. As part of that goal, I believe we should not only be the students, but also the teachers sharing what we know and coming alongside the home builders, contractors and owners.” Molnar looks forward to working with builders, contractors and members of the community.