Risk, Resilience & Renewal
Hello There!
My name is Brian L. Hill. For over 25 years, my job has been to dissect what went wrong in the built environment. I have analyzed complex failures in buildings and businesses, which gave me a unique ‘hindsight is 20/20’ perspective.
“The Mending Wall” is where I share that perspective.
Today, I lead two advisory firms, each with a distinct mission:
Building Advisory Group is dedicated to leveraging our ‘hindsight is 20/20’ experience to help owners and their representatives identify, understand, and prevent complex problems impacting building performance.
AEC Forensics Group is dedicated to providing attorneys with strategic, forensic-level support for their high-stakes claims and disputes.
Here are the latest posts:
2026 California Construction Law Updates: The Year of Enforcement
December 31, 2025
For the last decade, California’s approach to the built environment has been defined by incentives. But as we analyze the 2026 California construction law updates, it is clear that era is over. The state is done asking nicely. The regulatory landscape has shifted from incentivization to enforcement. We are seeing strict statutory “shot clocks,” aggressive new inspection mandates, and severe financial penalties for non-compliance. The theme for 2026 is Consequence. Whether it is the 24% interest penalty for delaying contractor payments or the “domino effect” of new habitability laws, the cost of being reactive just went up. Here is my forensic outlook for the coming year. (Note: I am not an attorney, so please don’t confuse this as legal advice, and … Continue Reading
AI in Building Forensics: Moving Beyond Data Collection to Risk Management
December 17, 2025
Know your enemy, know his sword. Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy The role of AI in building forensics is expanding rapidly, promising to revolutionize how we assess and maintain assets. I was reminded of this shift by a compelling article titled ‘ROI of Envelope Intelligence: What Lamarr.AI Uncovers in Minutes that took Months.‘ It focuses heavily on the Return on Investment of using autonomous drones to scan buildings, and the arguments for efficiency are undeniably strong. The piece highlights how this technology uncovers issues in “minutes that took months” using traditional methods. The metrics are staggering. They cite an 85% reduction in time and a cost structure roughly 90% cheaper than manual audits. … Continue Reading
BTS: Why Balcony Assurance Group is Now Building Advisory Group
December 12, 2025
The Balcony Assurance Origin Story It all began with a tragedy. In 2015, a balcony collapsed at a Berkeley apartment building, resulting in the death and injury of a number of young people. A few weeks later, my firm was called in to assist with the investigation. What we discovered was a chilling lesson that has shaped my entire professional philosophy: the exterior of the balcony looked pristine, but the concealed wood framing inside was like “pulled pork.” The building was less than ten years old. That single, visceral experience revealed a profound and dangerous gap in the industry. Visual inspection, the common standard, was not enough to ensure safety. This led me to develop a new, more rigorous inspection … Continue Reading
You Get the Good with the Bad: Construction Defects Down, Payment Disputes Up
December 11, 2025
My longtime friend and roommate in college, Tony, used to have a saying: You get the Good with the Bad I can’t tell you how many times in life I remind myself of that brilliantly simple concept. In the construction industry, we often look for a single trend: Is it getting better? Or are things getting worse? And in what ways? Recently the 8th Annual CRUX Insight Report was published analyzing global construction claims and dispute causation involving engineering projects. With a total capital expenditure of +$2.4-trillion, the over 2,000 individual projects included in the study claimed $95-billion in costs/damages. The Good: Construction Defects are Down Overall, the report indicated a downward trend in claims for defective construction. Here is … Continue Reading
From Compliance to Proactive Risk Management: Ending Campus Nose-Blindness
December 2, 2025
There used to be a series of commercials that ran on TV promoting Febreeze, centered on the idea of going nose blind. The narrator would explain that when you spend enough time immersed in a scent, good or bad, you begin to lose perception of that scent. The same concept occurs with building maintenance. Most everyone can relate to a situation where some sort of pesky routine upkeep was put off, and then put off, until eventually something happens that can no longer be ignored. Sometimes the cost impacts of deferred maintenance, or worse, the potential risk to building occupants, requires a more disciplined approach. From Compliance to Proactive Risk Management Leadership Just a couple of years ago, we were … Continue Reading
