Facility managers know obtaining the proper permits to complete facility work is a crucial part of a job. Equally important is securing all the proper permissions when a work order is issued.
These were best practices neglected by Twitter leadership recently. As San Francisco-based Twitter surprised the world by rebranding to X, workers attempted to take down the iconic metal Twitter signs on the company’s facility. But police stopped work because the aerial work platform the workers were using was blocking traffic and the workers didn’t have a permit.
What’s more, according to The San Francisco Standard, the workers didn’t have the necessary permission from the building’s owners to remove the sign. So police were called in to mediate the situation. Police issued a statement that no crime had been committed and the incident was not a police matter.
The full Twitter name remains on one side of the sign, but just “er” remain on the other side. No word on when work will continue to remove the rest of the sign.
Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk had previously run afoul of San Francisco’s Department of Buildings for creating bedrooms in a commercial building, in violation of San Francisco building code.
Greg Zimmerman is senior contributing editor for FacilitiesNet.com and Building Operating Management magazine.
