[Superman]

I really have never understood why we do not consider government-bashing to be political. Not criticizing. I just simply notice one political party that cares about government and notices the social need for it, while another political party does its best to defund and reduce it, and then make the remaining government agencies as dysfunctional as possible. But I guess this not not politics, per se.

I served a government regulatory function for much of my career, and this does mean that you will make a certain proportion of stakeholders angry. Nature of the beast. It is simply not possible to perform a regulatory function and make everyone happy at the same time.

Looping back to the OP.....hiring someone like a former construction contractor to perform a regulatory function is potentially awesome and also potentially disastrous. Yes, they have a great deal of technical knowledge. But.....if their heart is not in it.....if their agenda is make contractors successful and aid them in controlling costs and making money.....then they will need to be fired. Inspecting buildings under construction to stop contractors from cutting corners is the purpose of building inspections. If the inspector's agenda is to protect the contractor instead of the consumer, then the inspector is not doing his job.

And the contractors will like that very much. And be very unhappy when he is fired.

I regulated the construction industry, though my gig was not building code or building inspection. But I did regulate construction and I can tell you unequivocally that contractors WILL cut corners if allowed. Some are way worse than others. There are some AMAZING and efficient and impressive construction contractors out there that I admire and appreciate very much. But there is good reason to regulate that industry. One of the reasons is to protect those good contractors.