Dear Colleague:

Earlier this month, the Association of Major City & County Building Officials completed its 22nd annual meeting. As last year, our meeting was held jointly with the National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, which has provided secretariat services to us since 1982. I know that a great many of you found yourselves unable to participate at this year’s meeting due to either major budget constraints or your needing to stay at home to mind the store and, in some cases, handle natural disasters.

In this letter I would like to update all of you as the chief building regulatory officials of our nation’s major cities and counties, on the outcome of our annual meeting and on the important role that AMCBO can fill in helping all of us do our jobs.

Before I get into that, I first would like to extend a few thank yous to my colleagues for your input and support during this past year. I especially want to thank Andrew Adelman, City of Los Angeles, for his input on several of our important issues calls; Jeff Starkey for hosting the High-Rise Retrofit Conference in Wilmington, Delaware, this past March; and Patricia Lancaster, New York City Building Commissioner, for her sharing a co-chair and panelist role with me in several sessions during the just concluded annual meeting in Salt Lake City. I also want to thank NCSBCS for the super job they did in working with us throughout the year and in putting together a very informative annual conference.

SUMMARY OF SAMPLE ISSUES ADDRESSED AT AMCBO ANNUAL MEETING IN SALT LAKE CITY SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 1

Over 20 years ago, AMCBO was founded by such leaders as Creighton Lederer of Detroit, Paul Imhoff of Pittsburgh, and led and supported over the years by Frank Bosak of Memphis, Gerry Jones of Kansas City, Lee Jensen of Milwaukee, Joe Fitzgerald and Harold Olin of Chicago; Mathew Lampe of Seattle, Harriet Burnett of New Orleans, Dave Wismer of Philadelphia, Marty Walsh of St. Louis, Dot Ye of San Francisco, and Sophie Zager of Fairfax County, Virginia. Now all of these individuals have retired and a new core of major city and county building officials share in the leadership of our association and in working daily to meet the major challenges facing the nation’s largest cities and counties as we work to serve mayors, county administrators, citizens and the construction industry.

Under the theme "Are You Prepared For This?" our joint annual conference with NCSBCS provided AMCBO members with an outstanding array of speakers and panels to help us address major issues facing jurisdictions today. Here are my thoughts on highlights of those sessions that I believe might be of interest to you.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS

Nationally, a majority of the construction work force will be Hispanic within the next ten years. While this has long been true in the southwestern United States, this is a relatively new trend in the rest of the country. Many of the unskilled construction laborers in major cities and counties are coming from Mexico and other Latin American nations with little or no experience with building codes and standards. This movement will continue and craftsmen in the skilled trades will come increasingly from this largely non-English speaking group. Skilled craftsmen are retiring and they are not being replaced for a number of reasons. One is that young people in the United States are not entering the construction workforce. Also, construction management (foremen and managers) will become increasingly Hispanic. Yesterday, I was introduced to a general contractor’s manager on a large building project. The person had a Hispanic name and judging by his accent, English was his "second language". This introduction quickly became a learning experience for me. I realized that this is the future.

The issues for building officials are:

• How will we communicate with these workers? We will have to go beyond "bilingual" notices and forms. Our inspectors will need more language tools.

• How will these people become educated about complying with our building codes? Historically, we have relied on unions and apprenticeship programs to develop the abilities of the skilled trades. We will need to supplement these with other tools.

Major cities are the first jurisdictions to address these issues, and we need to share our best practices and experiences with successfully addressing the language barrier and education gap that is occurring here. During the Salt Lake City meeting, a speaker from "Spanish in a Pinch" shared with us some short cut language barrier bridging tools that are available to help us in the immediate term.

In addition to this session on Spanish, the annual meeting included the release of a joint AMCBO/NCSBCS survey to local and state building department directors to ascertain actions they are taking to handle the growing demands being placed on their programs by the large number of senior staff who will be retiring over the next 5 to 10 years. (See survey.)

HOMELAND SECURITY

Annual meeting attendees heard a very informative and sobering presentation from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Director for State and Territorial Coordination, Matt Bettenhausen. He described the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System that go into place this fall, and he left the meeting with a better understanding of the critical role which we as major city and county building officials play in the implementation of those plans.

Homeland security is going to become more of an issue for all of us. The new Department of Homeland Security will be involved in all disasters, not just terrorism. The Department is realizing that the local building department contains a lot of helpful information that can be of assistance to both a terrorist and the response to a disaster. To date, we have been overlooked as a resource. That will change. More of us will receive training in the Incident Command System and ways to manage local governments’ response to disasters. Most attendees had local emergency plans in their briefcases or carried "flash cards" that had emergency information and could be easily plugged into a computer.

The University of Texas has online courses that contain information on managing emergencies and the Incident Command System.

WORLD TRADE CENTER DISASTER REPORT

Regarding 9/11, Dr. Shyam Sunder, Deputy Director of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, gave a presentation on NIST’s efforts to study the collapse of the twin towers at the World Trade Center. NIST has had a multiyear effort looking into the events of 9-11 from a building perspective. AMCBO has been monitoring this effort closely. This December, NIST will complete its report and will be recommending code changes as a result of its study of that collapse.

Their studies are leading to a conclusion that the fires that followed the airplane crashes were more instrumental in setting the stage for collapse of the towers than the crashes were. The burning fuel from the airplanes ignited combustible materials on the floors, which became fires. The fires created the heat that weakened the structural members of the buildings.

Dr. Sunder was asked about code changes, and he indicated that changes will be proposed as a result of their study but could not be very specific about the language of the recommendations. These changes will probably involve changes in fire-resistance ratings and evacuation features in high-rise buildings. According to Dr. Sunder, over the years the code bodies have been willing to reduce the fire-resistance ratings of structural elements of the building in return for installing fire suppression systems. It appears that there may be a questioning of the wisdom of those "trade offs" in the aftermath of 9-11. There will be a lot more said about these issues in early 2005. AMCBO will continue to monitor the developments and will seek our members input in developing and making recommendations to the model code groups (and to NIST) when appropriate. Please contact me if you are interested in participating in the group providing such input.

CHANGES IN FEDERAL REGULATIONS

Our annual meeting included two updates on changes in Federal regulatory programs, those at the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as regards affordable housing and Marsha Mazz, Technical Assistance Coordinator from the U. S. Architectural and Transportation Barrier Compliance Board, presented the recently released updated Accessibility Guidelines.

BUILDING RETROFIT, REHAB, PROGRAM FUNDING & STAFFING

As usual, there was the lively exchange of information between jurisdictions on elements of recovering expenses through fees, retrofitting of existing buildings and the Building Effectiveness Grading Schedule being managed by ISO. One building official indicated to me that he got more information from these exchanges than from the formal programs. I had to shorten one discussion during the Salt Lake City meeting so the group could go to lunch.

There was much more covered at our joint annual meeting that is of relevance to your building codes administration programs. Over the next few weeks, AMCBO and NCSBCS will be posting to our website PowerPoint presentations and program summaries from those sessions. I recommend that you visit that site at www.ncsbcs.org and learn more about our Salt Lake City conference.

AMCBO SERVICES TO OUR EXISTING & FUTURE MEMBERS

On another note, AMCBO and NCSBCS are discussing ways to improve their ability to represent the interests of both local and state government and the code enforcement community. You will see changes and new developments soon that will serve you better. One of the first developments will be a "Code Communicators Message Board" which will be up and running before November 2004 for members of both associations. This was unveiled at the meeting in Salt Lake City. I encourage all of you to begin using this tool.

An area discussed extensively among AMCBO members over our luncheon session on September 30 was the way in which AMCBO is in the unique position of being able to represent local government on national issues. The model codes are vendors to government; therefore, they can’t truly represent local government without creating either a direct or a potential conflict of interest. In addition, from time to time we get questions from jurisdictions asking how to resolve conflicts between codes and standards. Also AMCBO has made comments to proposed regulations in the Federal Register on behalf of major cities, and in early 2005 (as previously noted), we will be providing input on NIST recommendations concerning changes to our building codes in response to their World Trade Center disaster findings. AMCBO can effectively provide such input on behalf of the major cities and counties when other groups can’t.

Regarding the model codes, I am pleased to be participating on a steering committee with the new Major Jurisdictions Committee with the International Code Council. I see this committee as a good tool for providing the ICC with the input of major jurisdictions on the model codes. There is a need for both AMCBO and the Major Jurisdictions Committee within the ICC.

Regarding our ability to better serve the interests of our members, AMCBO is working to conclude cooperative agreements with both the U. S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties to serve as their representatives in a manner that is similar to the NCSBCS agreement with the National Governors Association. This is unique to our two organizations, one in which neither AMCBO or NCSBCS can be viewed as having a conflict of interest which the model code groups do because they are vendors to local government. Neither NACo nor the U.S. Conference of Mayors has an affiliation with a group that can provide expertise on building code issues. AMCBO is pleased to fill that niche. I will have more on that arrangement in a subsequent letter to you.

AMCBO AS MECHANISM FOR INFORMATION EXCHANGE

I became involved in AMCBO some 12 years ago as I saw it as an ideal mechanism for sharing best practices and experiences with my colleagues in jurisdictions of similar size and organizational complexity. Our newsletters, important issues conference calls, annual and special meetings, and our new joint "Message Board" with NCSBCS, provide several venues for such communication.

I would like to close with a personal request for input from all of you on a matter that many of you also are facing, the ability to develop 3 to 5 year work plans for your city or county.

We in Richmond have been asked to prepare a 3-year work plan on the issues that will be important to the city and its building department. I suspect that all of us are facing similar questions. I would be interested in hearing from you on the issues that your city or county will be facing during the next three years. For example, some of our major issues include: replacing key personnel who are retiring, finding funding for automation, increased roles in homeland security, and dealing with a changing and non-English speaking work force.

I’m interested in hearing comments on other issues from the building officials. You may email your comments to AMCBO in care of our secretariat, Robert Wible, at rwible@ncsbcs.org.

In conclusion, cities and our surrounding counties are exciting places to work and to live. The building department is a key element in making jurisdictions economically viable, secure and livable. I strongly believe that AMCBO will play a key role in making the quality of life in the nation’s largest jurisdictions desirable. I invite you to join us in that effort.

Thanks for your support and input. Let’s keep the communication open.

Sincerely,

Claude Cooper
AMCBO Chairman & Building Commission, City of Richmond, Virginia
(804) 646-6624
coopercg@ci.richmond.va.us

Please visit our portion of the NCSBCS website – www.ncsbcs.org - for additional information on the activities of AMCBO including summaries of the High-Rise Retrofit Conference, public comments on Federal Register notices, and summaries of important issues calls.