EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS), Association of Major City/County Building Officials (AMCBO), and the City of Wilmington, Delaware, hosted a one-day conference on high-rise retrofit at the Wyndham Hotel on Monday, March 29, 2004.

AMCBO/NCSBCS members and guests attending the program:

Claude Cooper, AMCBO Chairman & Building Commissioner, City of Richmond, VA
Ronald Graziano, Chief, Pittsburgh Bureau of Buildings
Roland Hall, International Code Council
John Jennings, Assistant Chief, Pittsburgh Bureau of Buildings
David Levey, Senior Vice President, Forest City Development Corporation
George Miller, Chief, Fire Code Enforcement, Division of Fire Safety, New Jersey
     Department of Community Affairs
Norma Reyes, Commissioner, Chicago Department of Buildings
Emory Rodgers, Regulatory Consultant, Virginia Department of
     Housing & Community Development
Jonathan Siu, Principal Engineer/Building Official, Seattle Department
     of Planning & Development
Jeffrery Starkey, Commissioner of Licenses and Inspections, 
     Wilmington Department of Licenses & Inspections
Shyam Sunder, Acting Deputy Director, NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory
Mark Topping, Deputy Commissioner Administration & Technology,
     New York City Department of Buildings
Robert Wible, Executive Director, NCSBCS

This report summarizes the major topics covered in the program.

Welcome & Introductions
AMCBO Chairman, Claude Cooper, and Wilmington’s chief building official, Jeff Starkey, welcomed everyone to the conference. Mr. Starkey introduced Wilmington Mayor James Baker who thanked the attendees for coming to his city and noted the critical role that the city’s building codes enforcement program played in assuring the economic vitality of Delaware’s largest city.

Understanding Retrofit
Mark Topping, New York City Deputy Commissioner for Administration and Technology and the Vice Chairman of the NCSBCS Regulatory Affairs Committee opened the program as moderator for this session. Mr. Topping described the fact that this program would be looking purely at retrofit issues and not at building rehabilitation code issues. The idea for this program originated from discussions at the joint AMCBO/NCSBCS annual conference in Portland, Oregon, in October 2003 and the conference was planned in coordination with AMCBO and the NCSBCS Regulatory Affairs Committee.

The speaker for the session, George Miller, Chief Fire Code Enforcement for the Division of Fire Safety of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, noted that building rehabilitation covers a set of code provisions that cover each building individually as that building is undergoing renovation and the adaptive reuse of that building. Retrofit includes provisions that cover all existing buildings regardless as to whether or not that building is under renovation. The provisions are uniform for all buildings covered by that retrofit law (e.g. high rises, unreinforced masonry structures in high seismic activity areas). Examples include seismic safety retrofit in California and placing passive and active fire protection systems in buildings and sprinklers in high-rise buildings.

Mr. Miller described the evolution of retrofit provisions dating back to the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire in 1912 in New York City and actions taken in New Jersey to handle retrofit, including accessibility, loss mitigation, energy efficiency and green buildings. A copy of New Jersey’s retrofit provisions was shared with attendees.

In discussion following his presentation, it was noted that, because of the politics involved, it often is easier to get retrofit codes adopted at the state level rather than at the local level. Indeed Claude Cooper noted that several AMCBO members had indicated they could not attend this program because it covered a topic that was too controversial in their city.

In the question and answer session, it also was noted that in many jurisdictions retrofit programs went along with economic incentive programs to stimulate urban revitalization. Also, jurisdictions gave building owners as much as a decade to install the new requirements.

When to Require Retrofit
Claude Cooper opened the second panel session noting that one of the major issues of concern in the area of retrofit was how do you balance safety and economics. He described efforts in Richmond to bring back online several older buildings. This included the issues regarding emergency exits, sprinkler retrofit, and the need to revitalize the core business districts of our nation’s older cities.

Members of the panel for this session were then introduced. These included Roland Hall, International Code Council representative in the mid-Atlantic region; Shyam Sunder, Deputy Director of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory at NIST; and David Levy, Forest City Development Corporation.

Roland Hall described the retrofit provisions within the International Existing Buildings Code. This code, whose first edition was published in 2003, is available to designers as an option to the requirements of Chapter 34 of the International Building Code when alterations or changes in occupancy occur in existing buildings. Mr. Hall noted that jurisdictions were beginning to adopt and use the new ICC Code.

Shyam Sunder described the research that NIST is doing on the World Trade Center disaster. He distributed several handouts from their work and noted that the following were the objectives of their work was to find out: Why did these buildings come down? Could the evacuation and emergency response have been better? Should there be changes made in evacuation and emergency provisions? Were there any procedures and practices in the building regulatory system that should be modified? What areas in the national building codes should be changed?

In NIST’s research (under the National Construction Safety Team Act), Mr. Sunder noted that they were looking at: the aircraft collisions with the building, occupant behavior, evacuation and emergency response, and fire safety and life safety.

NIST is assessing the most probable structural collapse sequence, the floor systems, fireproofing.  Some of the preliminary findings include:

• the need for better training for building occupants;

• the installation of backup generators in the upper floors of high-rise buildings;

• the installation of specific features in elevators so firemen can use them to get equipment to the upper floors quickly;

• better communications so the emergency personnel inside the building can get a good picture of what is happening; and

• the advisability of decreasing the fire rating of structural members as a trade-off for installing sprinklers and a better fire endurance performance test;

Mr. Sunder noted that the final NIST report on the World Trade Center should be out in the fall. NCSBCS Executive Director extended an invitation to Mr. Sunder to present that report to the members of AMCBO and NCSBCS at their joint annual meeting in Salt Lake City in late September.

In the question session following Mr. Sunder’s presentation, several attendees raised the issue of potential conflicts between new security requirements for high rise (and other structures) coming out of 9/11 investigations and follow-up and emergency evacuation and affordability of such structures. Both Mr. Sunder and New York City Deputy Commissioner Topping noted that their work was taking into consideration the need to balance these issues.

David Levy from Forest City described his firm’s and similar builders/developers concern with the issues of economic viability of properties and the need to be aware of cost versus public safety. In the question and answer period, the participants were given the opportunity to discuss with Mr. Levy the critical importance of balancing affordability with assuring adequate public safety. In striking this balance, Mr. Levy indicated that labor and material costs were more often significant factors in the economics of a project than the long-term insurance costs.

Mr. Levy used as a case study his firm’s work on the renovation and retrofit of the Drake Hotel in Philadelphia. Mr. Cooper and Mr. Levy also shared with the attendees concerns regarding efforts in Richmond to convert old tobacco warehouses to other occupancies. The project highlights problems associated with conflicting authority involved between the Virginia Department of Historic Preservation (which approved the project) and the U.S. National Park Service that said they would approve the project only with significant and very costly changes in the construction.

The Politics of Building Retrofit
Wilmington’s Mayor’s Chief of Staff, Bill Montgomery, provided a luncheon address focusing on the politics of building retrofit. His presentation described the conflicting forces and interest groups within a city that lobby and work for or against adopting building retrofit provisions to the city’s building code.

He noted that cities must have the political will to address these problems head on and in open public forums. The challenge often is "how to make the projects doable and get the builders to do the right thing." He noted that in Wilmington the city was working on retrofitting 275 apartments in a development cluster in an effort to revitalize the city. Mr. Montgomery noted that this project involved monthly meetings of the mayor with representatives from the building and fire departments to assure adequate coordination of the project. The project involves the mandated sprinklering of all the retrofitted apartments.

A key to addressing this issue identified in the presentation was to get all of the stakeholders together at the beginning of a project and keep in close contact with them throughout the construction process. The Mayor’s Chief of Staff also noted the importance of making certain there was uniformity between the building and the fire departments within a city as to how the city’s building retrofit provisions are interpreted and enforced.

Mr. Cooper thanked Mr. Montgomery for his candid and insightful presentation.

Examples of Building Retrofit Laws
Claude Cooper opened the afternoon session of the conference by inviting Chicago Building Commissioner, Norma Reyes; Pittsburgh Bureau of Building Inspection Director, Ron Graziano; and New York City’s Mark Topping to each give a presentation providing attendees with examples of how their respective cities addressed building retrofit.

Chicago:  Commissioner Reyes described the history of building retrofit requirements within Chicago dating back to the Chicago Fire and the 1903 Iroquios Theater fire in which 670 people died.

The Commissioner shared copies of her city’s pending building retrofit law that phase in over twelve years certain safety provisions in all existing high-rise buildings in Chicago. By 2009, all such buildings must have two voice communications systems and, by 2016, all buildings must be fully sprinklered. Retrofit sprinklering must occur in three stages: 1/3 of the buildings are to be fully sprinklered by 2008, 2/3 in 2012, and all by 2016. (The statute does not apply to landmark commercial buildings.)

In addition, the city has undertaken and will complete by January 2005 an evaluation of all such buildings for fire safety. An evaluation committee is being set up to look at standards for materials and installation and at alterations and repairs provisions for these buildings.

Commissioner Reyes urged attendees, if they haven’t already done so, to undertake an assessment as to what buildings are in their inventory and conduct both a risk and cost analysis to ascertain what retrofit provisions should be adopted and applied over what time frame.

The Commissioner also recommended that building officials be educated concerning the economics of construction in their respective communities and the costs of code compliance and their impact on urban revitalization efforts. "You cannot regulate in a vacuum. We need to look at the possibility of having a two-tiered regulatory system that allows us to self-certify some builders (worthy of it) and then concentrate our resources on those that require major oversight."

Chicago also has in place a new ordinance that mandates building evacuation drills be conducted every year. This includes a drill involving the full evacuation of the entire building every third and fifth year. In a recent full evacuation test of a 64 story building, it took 32 minutes to evacuate all 3,000 people who worked in that building.

"Our cities need to be strict, creative and accommodative," to the needs of both our construction community and our citizens.

Pittsburgh:  Ron Graziano described his city’s efforts beginning in 1987 to retrofit commercial and high-rise buildings with pull stations and smoke detectors in common areas. Under that statute, all buildings had to have smoke detectors if no exits went to grade. A phased-in implementation schedule accompanied the law. Building owners had six months to get drawings into the city, 12 months to install, and four to five years to come into full compliance with the law.

The city in turn has conducted more unannounced inspections to assure compliance and is using unannounced inspections for nightclubs.

New York City:  Deputy Commissioner Mark Topping shared with attendees copies of his city’s proposed ordinances for retrofit and the recommendations that came out of the city’s analysis of the World Trade Center disaster.

He noted that the city is in the process of adopting the International Building Code and related family of codes and that other may be considered in this adoption process.

In a general discussion that followed, it was noted that in many cities owners and residents of high-rise residential structures were lobbying successfully to be excluded from retrofit statutes. Several attendees noted that this left citizens who lived in such structures more vulnerable to fire disasters than those who worked in high-rise structures.

Next Steps - Where Do We Go From Here?
Claude Cooper moderated the closing session of the conference during which attendees focused on answering the above question.

With more cities wanting to revitalize their older neighborhoods and core commercial areas and the public demanding greater levels of public safety (including homeland security issues), Mr. Cooper asked what could AMCBO and NCSBCS do to help states, major cities and counties address the competing and conflicting forces involved in trying to strike an appropriate balance between life safety and affordability?

Several suggestions were offered and discussed:

1. Serve as or identify a neutral body to come up with model building retrofit provisions – such as retrofit sprinkler numbers – that could be considered by cities.
2. Survey and gather data on what retrofit provisions already exist out there and how they are being enforced.
3. Look at and share information on cost savings that can come from building retrofit.
4. Compile and share data with states and localities as to some other city services that have a negative impact on the affordability of building retrofit – such as:

• Water utilities charges for standby water services
• The fact that the average sprinkler system takes 50 gallons of water to put out a fire while the fire department requires 250 gallons be available.
• Utility requirements for 4" lines to provide water when 2" lines are adequate.

In a discussion of the above items, it was agreed that AMCBO and NCSBCS indeed should host a follow-up program on high-rise retrofit at their joint annual meeting being co-located with the International Code Council (ICC) in Salt Lake City, Utah, in late September.

It was further agreed that AMCBO and the NCSBCS Regulatory Affairs Committee would review the above seven "next step areas" and from them select several to work on and serve as topics to be covered in the follow-up program on this topic in Salt Lake City.

Mr. Cooper and Mr. Wible concluded the Wilmington conference by thanking Mayor Baker, Mr. Starkey and his staff for hosting the program and everyone for attending.