City building codes and inspections are intended to ensure the quality of construction work in Lawrence, but the system apparently only works as well as its computers.

When in doubt, blame the computer. What better way to explain the fact that more than a fourth of the building projects that received city permits in 2001 and an unknown number of projects from previous years never received final inspections? The blame, according to Victor Torres, the city’s director of Neighborhood Resources, lies with poor record-keeping software on his department’s computers.

And why did this revelation come to the city’s attention this week? Because Torres had submitted to city commissioners a budget request that included $40,450 to buy new software that would automatically alert inspectors to aging building permits.

How did we function before we had computers? In the case of the city’s housing inspection system, it’s hard to believe that the pre-computer operation was any less efficient or accurate.

The city’s building permit system goes like this: A contractor gets a permit to do construction work anything from plumbing work to building an entire house. When the job is done, the contractor calls the city to set up an inspection to make sure the work conforms to the city’s Uniform Housing Code.

In 2001, 3,343 building permits were issued. However, the city has no idea how or whether 892 of those construction projects were completed. Those projects never received a final inspection and have had no inspection activity in at least six months. According to Torres that means those 892 permits either expired without work being completed or the projects they authorized were completed but never received a final inspection.

What this means is that hundreds of Lawrence residents may be living in homes where work was done but never inspected. It could be their whole house or some remodeling work. In either case, they probably have paid for work that may or may not meet the city’s code standards. And it’s not just a few cases; it’s 26 percent of the projects that received permits in 2001 alone.

Torres, who has headed the department since early 2001, told city commissioners that there are more cases from previous years. “We have open permits that are very old. We have some that are five, 10 years old.”

Torres said he had begun to query the old software to find permits that have had no inspection activity for at least six months, but said the city may not be able to do much about permits that are older than that.

City commissioners should be outraged by this lack of responsibility and should think twice before authorizing additional funding until the department cleans up its act. New computer software might help solve this problem, but only if it is used by people who will provide the oversight necessary to make sure the city is completing its job to inspect and enforce its building codes.