About

Dean Rivale is a Home Inspector with over 11,000 hours of residential home inspection experience in the San Francisco Bay Area, California Central Valley and Coachella Valley.  He is also a construction manager who can act as a Remote Home Owner’s Rep helping remote owners manage major remodel projects for second homes and rental properties.

Early in his career, Dean was a field engineer on large industrial projects such as high-end office buildings and waste water treatment plants in Denver, CO.  He moved into construction project management after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and managed multimillion-dollar seismic retrofit, lab facility, and hospital expansion projects.

In 1994, Dean traveled to Northridge, CA to work as a FEMA Home Inspector to help that region recover from the $42B in earthquake damage.  For the next 10 years, Dean conducted home inspections for construction defect litigation working on large home developer cases across the Bay Area and Central Valley.  In that capacity, Dean completed more than 3,000 individual inspections, and provided subject matter expert opinions for legal mediations and court cases.  Dean has expertise in:

  • Roofing: nailing, flashing, and product defects
  • Water Intrusion: head, sill and jamb flashings at doors and windows, water proof membranes on decks
  • Stucco: Underlayment integration with adjacent finishes, nailing of lathe, and excessive cracking investigation
  • Mechanical/electrical systems: verified code compliance for devices
  • Structural: verified strapping, tie-downs, and anchor bolts; nailing patterns for shear walls; spacing of structural framing members

In addition to over 30 years of construction field experience, Dean holds certifications in Project Management (PMP and CSM) and HVAC system design.  Dean is also a licensed general contractor (CA #652130) available for construction management consulting.

Dean relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Coachella Valley in October 2017. He also serves as a Director on the Board of the PGA West Residential Association where he Chairs the Architecture Committee.   He enjoys playing golf, pickleball, bocce, volunteering at the FIND Food Bank and at The American Express Golf Tournament.