In their inaugural or state-of-the-state addresses last month, a number of the nation’s governors called for regulatory reform initiatives in their state to both strengthen homeland security and enhance economic competitiveness. For example: California Governor Gray Davis announced a "Build California" program to create more affordable housing and streamline the regulatory process for small businesses; New York Governor George Pataki called for regulatory streamlining and infrastructure protection to both stimulate his state’s economy and enhance its security; and Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, specifically called for stimulating his state’s economy through the streamlining of their building regulatory system.

To support the states, a private-public partnership, the National Alliance on Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age, has been working over the past two years on initiatives that address the twin challenges of economic competitiveness and homeland security. The Alliance was formed by the National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, the National Governors Association, U. S. Conference of Mayors, National Association of Counties, National Association of State Chief Information Officers, National Institute of Standards and Technology, American Institute of Architects, Building Owners and Managers Association International, National Association of Home Builders, and 30 other governmental agencies and construction industry associations.

The United States’ $1.1 trillion a year domestic building construction industry and the regulatory system that oversees it play a vital role in our ability to successfully house and shelter citizens and the businesses that produce, store and distribute goods and services. Wherever that regulatory system is ineffective or inefficient, construction and regulatory costs increase, poor quality or performing buildings are produced, and the lives and livelihoods of citizens and the businesses that employ them are negatively impacted. (A builder of high-rise construction in Northern Virginia, for example, cites added costs to his construction projects of $100,000 per day due to regulatory delays.)

The National Alliance works to strengthen public safety and economic competitiveness by promoting the adoption and implementation by state and local governments of efficient streamlined regulatory practices and information technology that enhance the ability of the nation’s construction industry "to build better, faster, safer and at less cost." The Alliance’s initiatives also enhance our nation’s ability to effectively prepare for, respond to, and recover from manmade and natural disasters by establishing greater consistency and uniformity in our regulatory processes.

Current Alliance work products include: model streamlining legislation, rules, regulations and administrative procedures that reduce regulatory time and costs by increasing the effective use of information technology in the permitting, design, construction and inspection processes; listings of both available building regulatory hardware and software and contacts in states and localities that have successfully applied such information technology to streamline their regulatory system; and an outline of a project to develop alternative performance-based regulatory systems for construction.

Supported by federal grants, coordinated through the National Science and Technology Council’s Construction and Buildings Subcommittee and in-kind services of its members, the Alliance also has begun to develop a prototype of a secure, interoperable database for first responders of as-built building designs, evacuation plans and key contact information. The proposed system is designed to save lives and reduce property damage by linking together first responders across jurisdictional (including state) boundaries to provide more effective mutual aid to manmade or natural disasters.

In addition to the above, the Alliance is seeking future funding to:

1. make grants available to state and local governments to adopt and implement model streamlining processes and procedures;
2. expand the secure interoperable first responder database across the nation; and
3. work with the information technology community to develop procurement guidelines for state and local governments for interoperable building regulatory, design, construction and operation hardware and software.

In addition to these tasks, NCSBCS and a number of its Alliance partners are working to enhance homeland security by developing a program to extend to state and local governments, the professional expertise and resources of the public and private sector construction industry organizations and agencies involved in The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP). (This includes sharing expertise on how to minimize the impact on buildings and other infrastructure from terrorist attacks.)

This winter NCSBCS and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) were designated as the lead organizations to develop an outreach program to extend the resources of TISP member organizations to the homeland security directors at the state and local levels of government. Work sessions for this project are being conducted in the Washington, D.C., area in coordination with a number of TISP members and national organizations representing elected officials from state and local government.