Update on the Critical Issues Before the States

The Executive Summary to the NCSBCS February 2001 report to the nation’s governors, described the growing politicization of the code adoption process that was occurring in the wake of the breakdown in a once-promising cooperative effort between the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the International Code Council (ICC) to produce a coordinated set of uniform model construction codes and standards for state and local governments to adopt and enforce.

The report went on to describe the initiation of an aggressive lobbying effort by supporters of both of these fine public safety organizations to market to elected and administrative officials their respective model building codes. The report ended with some recommended actions that the states and their localities could take to reduce the potential political and economic problems some states already were experiencing from the rising acrimony over which organization’s set of codes to adopt.

While some have viewed this "competition" between different construction codes as "healthy" and a part of the free market philosophy of our nation, the majority of the nation’s construction industry and state and local code enforcement personnel did not. Over the past 30 months, increasingly more of the construction industry and state and local building and fire code enforcement personnel are seeing this code competition as an expensive and derisive process, a process not in the nation’s best interest as it is:

• causing unnecessary costs and confusion to the building industry, product manufacturers and suppliers;

• slowing the speed at which communities normally are able to adopt updated construction codes and beginning to negatively impact a jurisdiction’s building department performance ratings with the insurance industry,

• forcing state and local governments to shift precious human and financial resources from effective code enforcement to writing repetitive comparative analysis between competing code documents and spending six to ten additional months of time in public hearings.

Examples of the Problem

The February 2001 report on codes to the Governors offered examples of three states that put in place code update decision processes that would minimize the foreseen potential political and economic battles and time delays caused by the competition between the two national organizations offering building codes. Despite their best efforts to use processes that minimize politics and time delays, over the past 30 months, each of those states has had significant problems updating their codes. In Minnesota, the code comparison process has delayed for 6 months the code update adoption process, necessitated several hundred hours of state labor in code comparisons, and numerous additional public hearings. In Virginia, while the state has been forced to downsize its number of code enforcement personnel, it is being forced to shift some of its remaining personnel from inspection work to writing code comparative analysis.

In several other states, including California and Oregon, the code battles have slowed down the normal state code update cycle enough for the insurance industry’s building performance evaluation rating system to downgrade their recommended performance ratings for local jurisdictions, an action that potentially can result in increases in the insurance premium for consumers and industry alike in those communities.

Lastly, at a time when it is in our nation’s vital interest for our building and fire services to work cooperatively together to plan, train, and provide more effective disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery for their communities, the battle over whose construction code should be adopted and enforced, that of the ICC or the NFPA, in some states has turned these vital public servants into adversaries.

And To What Result? – Who Has Adopted What So Far?

In the 30 months since our previous report, NFPA has completed the development of its own building code and made it available for adoption in August 2002. The ICC International Building Code was available in 2000 for adoption.

As predicted in February 2001, most states and localities over the past two and a half years have experienced intense lobbying efforts by NFPA and the ICC to adopt their respective building codes. Also, as anticipated, most jurisdictions approached the code adoption question by adopting a mix of ICC and NFPA code documents and then making technical amendments to those codes to enable them to work without major conflicts.

Overall, according to the records of the ICC and the NFPA, the ICC International Building Code has been adopted in 32 states and 360 local jurisdictions and the NFPA 5000 Building Code has been adopted in two jurisdictions. The NFPA includes in their list the action taken on July 29, 2003, by the California Building Standards Commission.

On that date, the Building Standards Commission selected the NFPA 5000 Building Code as the basis for California to take actions leading over the next two years to the adoption of a new building code.

We Are Alone Among Developed Nations in our Lack of a Single Coordinated Set of Construction Codes

The United States today is the only major nation in the world that has not evolved a single set of uniform model construction codes and standards. The NCSBCS February 2001 report highlighted some of the economic benefits of having a single coordinated family of construction codes including: a reduction in errors in building design and construction caused by overlapping and conflicting construction codes; the inability of building product manufacturers to aggregate their markets and reduce the costs of their products; and the inability of state and local communities to better coordinate their disaster preparedness, prevention, response and recovery activities due to disparate codes and standards.

At the close of the 19^th Century and beginning of the 20^th, a number of our nation’s major cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco, suffered a devastating loss of lives and property from fires. Adding to those losses of life was the simple fact that the "free market place" had meant that there were no uniform standards for fire hose and fire hydrant connections. Fire companies from neighboring jurisdictions, for example, arrived to help put out the Baltimore fire yet could only stand idly by and watch the city burn because their hoses would not connect to that city’s fire hydrants.

The development and adoption of a single national standard for fire hydrant connections ended that dilemma.

At the World Trade Center, when first responders and engineers arrived from jurisdictions from New Jersey, Long Island, and the New York suburbs, they faced a similar dilemma. Not only were their communications systems not standardized, but the construction codes and standards that they enforced were different enough from those of New York City that engineers were limited in the professional expertise they could offer regarding which buildings would stand and which might fall in the aftermath of the terrorists plane crashes and fires.

While New York City and the State of New York have taken steps to address this problem by moving in recent months towards adopting a comparable set of coordinated construction codes and standards, neighboring states are being lobbied as the result of the NFPA/ICC code competition to adopt construction codes that are not comparable, potentially perpetuating the existing problem.

In the wake of 9/11, at a National Homeland Security Summit sponsored by McGraw-Hill in Washington, D.C. on May 15, 2003, keynote speaker Utah Governor Michael Leavitt noted that "To assure public safety and economic competitiveness of our nation, homeland security requires us to create interoperable government."

Both the National Fire Protection Association and the International Code Council for many years have produced for adoption and use by state and local governments quality codes and standards that assure the public’s health, welfare and life safety in the buildings in which we live, work, and play. Both organizations have fine professional staffs to support the codes and standards that historically their organizations have produced. Both organizations have an unquestioned history of public service; and both organizations, in the late 1990’s and first months of 2000, were seated at the table actively developing the framework within which their respective organizations would produce a coordinated set of construction codes and standards for adoption by state and local governments.

Today our nation is under constant threat of attack from both manmade sources and from natural events – floods, earthquakes, windstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes and fires. In the face of these all too real dangers, to NCSBCS warring building codes make no more sense than warring standards for threads on hose couplings did in the 1890’s.

Having monitored closely over the past 30 months the code adoption efforts of state and local governments and having been involved in addressing public safety issues raised by the events of 9/11, NCSBCS determined that it is in our nation’s best interest to get the NFPA and the ICC back to the table to develop a coordinated cohesive set of construction codes for our states and localities to adopt and enforce.

In that regard in preparing this update report for the nation’s governors, NCSBCS took the following action:

• NCSBCS Letter of June 27, 2003, to International Code Council and National Fire Protection Association – On June 27, 2003, NCSBCS President Tom Joachim wrote the following letter to the Chief Executive Officers of the National Fire Protection Association and the International Code Council:

June 27, 2003

Mr. James M. Shannon                                     Mr. James Lee Witt
President and CEO                                             Chief Executive Officer
National Fire Protection Association              International Code Council
One Batterymarch Park                                      5203 Leesburg Pike, Suite 600
Quincy, MA 02269                                             Falls Church, VA 22041

Dear Messrs. Shannon and Witt:

On behalf of the members and the Board of Directors of the National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, Inc. (NCSBCS), I want to congratulate you on your assumption of the responsibilities as chief executive officers respectively of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the International Code Council (ICC) and make a major request of you and your organizations.

Over the years in countless activities, NCSBCS has valued its working relationship with both of your outstanding organizations. We are deeply appreciative of the contributions that your organizations and members make to helping to assure the health, welfare, and life safety of all Americans. We also appreciate your working in partnership with us on the National Alliance on Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age which is making great progress in providing states and localities with information to help streamline their building regulatory processes to enhance public safety, homeland security, and the economic competitiveness of our country.

As our nation tries to successfully address the twin challenges of homeland security and economic competitiveness, it becomes more and more critical to state and local governments that they have access to a single compatible, cohesive family of construction codes and standards.

I am writing on behalf of our members and in support of our Executive Branch Agreement with the National Governors Association, to respectfully request, in your capacities as the new CEO’s of your respective organizations, that you agree to meet in the coming month to open up a dialogue among your two associations to resolve your past differences and establish a timetable to develop the single family of coordinated construction codes and standards for this nation.

At a time when our public and private sector must focus their attention on protecting the country from terrorist attacks and on reviving a slumping economy, the American public, our elected officials, the construction community, and the building and fire services do not benefit from either an ongoing battle between your two fine organizations as to whose code documents to adopt or to having to patchwork together diverse codes and standards produced by your two organizations.

In early August we will be issuing to the National Governors Association a brief follow-up report to our February 2001 report to the governors "Enhancing Public Safety and the States’ Role in the Global Economy Through Uniform Construction Codes and Standards." Requested by the NGA in the winter of 2001, that report provided information to the governors to help them sort out the implications of the competition between the NFPA and the ICC over whose set of codes to adopt.

In our August update we will include a copy of this letter and of whatever response we have received by July 31, 2003, from you to this request.

We are hopeful that under your new administrations your organizations are able to sit down together to enable our nation to receive the full benefit to safety and economic competitiveness that can be derived from your working together to develop the comprehensive compatible family of construction codes and standards our nation so desperately needs.

Thank you for giving this request your full consideration. With best regards and wishes to you and your organizations.

Sincerely,

Thomas R. Joachim (MN)
President, NCSBCS

ICC Response
NFPA Response

August 14, 2003

Mr. James M. Shannon                                                           Mr. James Lee Witt
President and CEO                                                                   Chief Executive Officer
National Fire Protection Association                                    International Code Council
One Batterymarch Park                                                            5203 Leesburg Pike, Suite 600
Quincy, MA 02269                                                                   Falls Church, VA 22041

Dear Messrs. Shannon and Witt:

Thank you for your respective responses to our letter of June 27, 2003, regarding the urgent need for your two fine organizations to open a dialogue to develop a cohesive set of coordinated construction codes and standards for this nation. We appreciate your mutual expressions of desire to talk with each other about this matter in the interest of the public’s safety in the built environment.

The continued threat posed by both manmade and natural disasters and the ongoing economic crisis facing our state and local governments make the need for your two organizations to sit down and develop a coordinated cohesive set model construction codes and standards of vital importance to all Americans.

As we noted in our June letter, NCSBCS later this week will issue an update report to the National Governors Association (NGA) regarding the status of the codes and standards that are available to their states and localities to adopt. We will include in that report your respective responses to our June letter and offer the governors our recommendations on ways in which their states might collectively or individually choose to proceed on the issues that are before them.

Each of your respective letters expresses an interest in establishing a dialogue among your organizations. The bottom line, however, is that we believe it is time for far more than just dialogue between the two organizations. It is time to resolve issues and stop forcing states and jurisdictions to spend many hours of staff time making a choice of which codes to adopt. These debates of 12 to 18 months over codes are not enhancing the safety and economic viability of our nation. Our country deserves one set of codes, supported by industry and government in this critical area that affects the health, welfare and safety of all Americans.

The members and staff of the Conference are available to play whatever role you may jointly request regarding the scheduling and conducting of such an activity. This includes our making available a list of nationally-recognized facilitators for such a session should you choose to seek such assistance.

Thank you both again for your responses to our June 27 letter. We are hopeful that you will be able to set a joint date in the coming month for the formal discussions that are necessary for our nation to receive the full benefit to our safety and economic competitiveness that can be derived from your cooperative development of a comprehensive compatible set of construction codes and standards based upon the fine documents which you produce.

Please know that we stand ready to offer whatever assistance you deem appropriate to such an important effort.

Sincerely,

Thomas R. Joachim (MN)
President, NCSBCS

NCSBCS Recommendation to Nation’s Governors

In light of the enclosed responses that NCSBCS received from the CEO’s of the ICC and NFPA and the contents of our August 14 letter back to them, NCSBCS respectfully concludes this update report to the nation’s governors making the following two recommendations:

This second recommendation is of major importance if we are to achieve Governor Leavitt’s vision of interoperable government. Under our Constitution, states and their localities adopt and enforce building codes. While some degree of technical amendments to the model codes produced in our nation may indeed be necessary to address truly unique state or local conditions, the codes already accommodate nearly every such condition.

Achieving interoperable government and facilitating effective mutual aid agreements across jurisdictional lines (between states with uniform statewide codes and between jurisdictions within a state in those states without such statewide regulations), is only possible where the technical amendments in the adopted codes are kept to an absolute minimum. (Additional information on this is available in the NCSBCS February 2001 report.)

CLOSING COMMENT

Under the terms of its Executive Branch Agreement with the National Governors Association, NCSBCS offers its professional expertise and staff resources to help facilitate, as suggested in our letter to NFPA and the ICC of August 14, 2003, the successful resolution of existing barriers to these two fine organizations cooperatively developing the above set of coordinated compatible construction codes and standards.