The purposes of building administration are to maintain public safety of buildings, public communication and hygiene and to beautify the city environment. These tasks closely involve the public, which puts the Office of Building Administration (OBA) in the front line of government services. To enable the reengineering of government administration, inspire a sense of honor and responsibility in the staff, differentiate the administrative and technical works, and to provide a single outlet for services, hence to improve service quality, and efficiently handle the increasingly heavier building administration duties, the OBA started working on ISO 9002 in December, 1998, and is the first building administration unit in the country to receive ISO 9002 certification. With the principles of “service is our top priority” and “focusing on the customer”, the OBA keeps searching for innovative service methods, exploiting community resources for the public as fully as possible, taking people’s opinions into consideration, and providing quality services.

Recently, the OBA has shifted its attention from checking and issuing building licenses to building administration. This includes promoting the report system for safety inspection of buildings, cracking down illegal buildings and buildings violating public safety, improving facilities for the handicapped in public buildings, monitoring the management of apartment building, and tidying and renewing advertising signs on buildings and on the street. The OBA has invested a lot of manpower and resources and has begun to see the effects.

Energy efficiency and ecological protection have been put into practice this year through the study and introduction of the green building concept. The OBA has expanded its quantity-oriented work to quality-oriented work. It is the first unit to promote ‘green building’ education and conduct training. In 2003 it spent a large amount of money on seminars, in which experts and scholars provided valuable suggestions, to make Kaohsiung City Hall a model green building. On January 1, 2003, the designated task of building lines in urban planning was transferred to the OBA so that similar types of work could be done by a single unit. In addition to the existing solid foundation, the OBA continues to obtain more professional skills and learn from academic research to better serve the public. The OBA shows a new trend in becoming an organization of practicality, integrity and efficiency.