NEWS RELEASE

For more information contact:

Carolyn Fitch (703) 481-2038

Salt Lake City, Utah – September 24, 2004. State and local government officials and representatives from the construction and information technology industries from across the United States will mark National Preparedness Month in Salt Lake City by participating in a series of special workshops being hosted by the National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS) and the Association of Major City/County Building Officials. (AMCBO)

The workshops, "Homeland Security - A Review of State and Local Government Roles, Responsibilities and Best Practices" and "Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation, Response and Recovery - Lessons Learned in the School of Hard Knocks" are part of the 37^th Joint Annual Conference of NCSBCS and AMCBO being held at the Marriott City Center September 29 – October 1, 2004.

The keynote speaker for the program on the afternoon of September 29 is U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s Director of State and Territorial Coordination, Matt Bettenhausen. Mr. Bettenhausen will open the Wednesday afternoon program on Homeland Security - Best Practices by covering the National Response Plan and the National Incident Management System. Along with the Department of Homeland Security, NCSBCS and AMCBO are among 80 co-sponsoring organizations of National Preparedness Month.

In the September 30 workshop session, a panel comprised of state and local building code administrators will share best practices for responding to and recovering from manmade and natural disasters. Serving on that panel are the Building Commissioner of New York City, Patricia Lancaster; the Building Commissioner of Richmond, Virginia, Claude Cooper; New Jersey Assistant Director of Codes Administration, Cynthia Wilk; and Maryland Director of Codes Administration, James Hanna. This session will include discussions of recovery from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

Other featured speakers at the annual conference include:

• Dr. Shyam Sunder, Acting Deputy Director of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, who will provide an update on the NIST World Trade Center Disaster Report due to be released in December.

• Bryant Applegate, Director of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Initiative on Affordable Housing.

NCSBCS, representing the chief building officials of the states, and AMCBO, representing the building commissioners of the nation’s largest cities and counties, have scheduled presentations on a wide range of other issues of importance to elected officials, the construction and information technology communities and building regulatory personnel.

These programs include:

• High Rise Retrofit - How jurisdictions are balancing public safety and rebuilding neighborhoods
• How to successfully address changing demographics and codes administration and enforcement (bi-lingual workforce, pending massive retirements of government personnel)
• Funding effective codes enforcement and community development in times of tight budgets
• Pending federal regulations that may impact the construction industry and state and local governments
• Effective approaches towards coordinating state and local construction codes and standard in response to regional disasters

On September 30, the program includes the Fourth National Forum on Building Smarter in the Digital Age that brings together the information technology industry with state and local building regulators and the construction industry. The Forum includes hands-on demonstrations of hardware and software now available for use in codes administration and enforcement and provides a look at actions being taken to make such hardware and software interoperable.

The NCSBCS/AMCBO annual conference starts on Wednesday, September 29, and runs through Friday afternoon, October 1, 2004. The theme is "Are You Prepared for This?" The program is being held in coordination with the International Code Council (ICC) annual meeting in Salt Lake City that runs from September 25-28.

A special one-day registration fee of $100/person has been set for building regulatory personnel, construction and information technology industry, and elected officials desiring to attend the program. The full 3-day registration fee is $400. A detailed annual conference agenda and registration form are available on the NCSBCS website at www.ncsbcs.org. On-site registration is available. Contact NCSBCS Executive Director Robert Wible at the Marriott City Center, 801 961-8700.