Building code cycle: Three of one, half a dozen of the other

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The architects, the building inspectors and many of the construction industry’s biggest clients are dead-set against it.

The structural engineers and the chairman of the N.C. Building Code Council are all for it.

The general contractors are split down the middle.

A proposal to double the number of years between updates of the state’s commercial building code has proven to be a divisive issue in the N.C. construction industry, which contributes $16.1 billion to the state’s annual gross domestic product.

It will all come to a head on March 11, when the state Building Code Council votes on a proposal to extend the code-update cycle from every three years to every six, with any changes needed in-between made on an ad-hoc basis.

That would make North Carolina the only state in the country that does not update its building code on the same triennial basis as the International Code Council. The ICC is a nonprofit organization that writes and publishes the International Building Code, which is used as a model for building codes in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and federal agencies ranging from the Defense Department to the National Park Service.

“The codes are updated every three years because of the introduction of new technologies and lessons from the past – we learn a lot from tragedies,” said Steve Daggers, spokesperson for the International Code Council.

“Each generation of the code has a little bit more measure of safety. Anything beyond three years is simply not as safe. For maximum safety, you update every three years. The states have to decide what is best for the public they serve. Some are diligent and some stretch it a little bit.”

For those who want a six-year cycle, it’s a matter of how much regulation is too much.

Dan Tingen, chairman of the state Building Code Council, uses the IBC’s ever-more-restrictive energy efficiency requirements as an example.

“For a certain amount of money, I could build you a net-zero house, a house that produces as much energy as it needs,” said Tingen, who also owns Tingen Construction Co. in Raleigh. “But at that cost, if I were forced to build those houses, I couldn’t sell very many of them, and I’d go out of business. People would move somewhere else. Regulation comes with a cost. Where is the right balance?”

The proposed change to the state’s commercial building code has been discussed at the BCC’s quarterly meetings since December 2012, and was introduced as a motion in September 2013.

At the most recent meeting of the state code council, in December, 31 industry representatives gave the council their input. One remained neutral, two supported the change to six years, and the rest urged the councilmembers to keep the three-year standard.

The BCC, a state board whose 17 members are appointed by the governor, voted to table the issue until next month.

If the BCC votes to expand the code change cycle to six years, North Carolina, which like many other states based its 2012 rules on the 2009 International Building Code, could be nine years behind by time the state code is changed in 2018.

That, depending on whom you choose to listen to, will mean either chaos or bliss for the industry, construction nirvana or apocalypse.

The proposed change comes after the N.C. General Assembly, asserting its right to side-step the Building Code Council’s authority over the administration of the state building codes, voted last year to change the state’s residential building code cycle from three years to six.

The stakes are much higher now that the BCC is considering doing the same thing with the commercial construction code, which both sides say is exponentially more complicated and costly, puts the safety of more occupants of a single building at risk and requires more energy.

With a six-year building-code cycle, the Tar Heel State will be either a bastion of free enterprise that will see a surge of new projects, or a dumping ground for old, unsafe technology that could slow down development.

After all, the building codes include a great deal more technical instructions than how to drive a nail into a nominal 2-by-4 stud.

Both sides claim their way of doing things would save the most money, keep citizens out of harm’s way and bring the state more building activity.

Proponents of the six-year cycle – including the N.C. Structural Engineers Association, Tingen and some contractors – say that not having to relearn increasingly complicated codes and conform to ever-higher standards as often as they do now would lead to bigger profits because familiar practices, tools and materials are less expensive to buy, design and install than novel ones.

“We polled our membership and 85 percent said three years is too much change too fast,” said Rob Stevenson, president of the N.C. Structural Engineers Association, which has about 200 members.

They also say the state will not lag behind the rest of the country because the BCC can make changes anytime and that the council can “reach ahead” to the IBC’s 2012 code, or even the 2015 version, once it is published.

“Any person can bring a proposal to us based on the 2012 international code,” Tingen said. “We can (update the code) much more orderly and quickly than anybody else, including the IBC.”

On top of that, Tingen is skeptical about the motivation of the ICC in changing codes every three years.

“It is part of their business model to update every three years, forcing people to buy all those (code) books,” he said. “They publish our code. If you get all the relevant volumes, you’re talking about thousands of dollars.”

Jim Bartl, Mecklenburg County Code Enforcement director, characterized Tingen and other six-year cycle proponents as “anti-regulation zealots bent on change for the sake of change, no matter the cost.” The county’s Building Development Commission, Code Enforcement’s advisory board, took an official stance against the change at its February meeting.

William Rakatansky, a Charlotte designer who is a spokesman for the N.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said the state’s adoption in 1999 of the IBC – and its three-year update cycle – as a model has improved the building process for all interested parties.

“Statistics show that that plan review failure rates hovered at 79 percent” before 1999, Rakatansky said. Since the IBC’s adoption, “plan review failure rates have falling to a range of 25 percent to 30 percent.”

Those who oppose expanding the cycle say that being out of sync with the IBC could cause more projects to fail inspection, leading to costly delays, even more costly tear-outs, and – if faults are not detected during inspections – more injuries and deaths.

“Codes today are much more integrated; it’s not made up of one building code,” said Bartl. “There’s the mechanical code, the fire code, and on and on. You have to be sure that changes in one code interact properly with the other codes. It’s a challenge for the International Code Council; the state building council has no capacity to correlate codes.”

That, said Bartl, “is one of our biggest fears: chaos.”

Changing the codes piecemeal would put the onus of keeping up with state changes on architects, engineers and general contractors, Bartl said, “at best driving up their cost of planning a project, and at worse causing failures and tear-outs.”

Many businesses and organizations representing businesses including Siemens, Simplex Grinnell and Honeywell say that North Carolina being out of sync with federal building and specialized codes will make operations more difficult and will put businesses in the state at a disadvantage when competing with those in other states.

All of which, Bartl said, adds up to a “chilling effect” on development as companies “sit around and wait” to see what the state BCC will do. “They become conservative, and that has a negative impact on the economy.”

Philip Stephens, a senior member of the Carolinas HealthCare System‘s facilities management group and president of the American Society for Healthcare Engineering, said that hospitals and emergency first responders will suffer from “overlapping, often outdated, and conflicting standards.”

Stephens cited a list of problems with the six-year proposal, including “unnecessary compliance” with “poorly written and often conflicting codes,” the “delay of the use of new technology” and “allow North Carolina to become the dumping ground for outdated technology.”

The six-year code-cycle adherents say that if chaos were to ensue, it would have done so already because states and local jurisdictions across the county now use different iterations of the IBC, yet North Carolina manages to interact just fine with them despite the differences.

“As a matter of fact, about 20 states are using the 2006 (international) codes, others are on the 2009 code and some are on the 2012,” Tingen said. “Connecticut, if you can believe this, is on 2003, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“And in New York, New York State and New York City use two different codes. It’s all over the map.”

Charts kept by the International Code Council back up Tingen’s assertions.

As for the state becoming a dumping ground for outdated technology, Tingen dismissed that argument as a “red herring”:

“I’ve heard that before, and that’s just not going to happen. If I were involved at CHC, I wouldn’t want it getting around to my patients that we weren’t using the best and latest technology. They can exceed the code whenever they want.

“Industries don’t rely on building codes to introduce new technologies. That’s just absurd. South Carolina uses the 2012 (international) building code while we use 2009, and I don’t see a flood of outdated products coming into the state from there. Innovation moves too fast for that to happen. A company that tried to sell old product in today’s market – that’s just not going to happen.”

Backers of retaining the three-year cycle said one of their biggest concerns is that they believe the state Building Code Council can’t make an unbiased decision on the extension proposal because most of its members represent the construction industry.

The N.C. General Statute creating the BCC requires it to have 11 representatives from various segments of construction and related industries.

The statute also requires the rest of the council to comprise two local-government representatives, a state agency member, a local fire department official, a member of the general public and a building inspector. The building inspector is Lon McSwain, who works for Mecklenburg County Code Enforcement.

The members serve two- to six-year terms.

The majority of the appointments “represent the stakeholders, and that is quite a bone of contention,” Bartl said. “What they don’t see is that this will do the exact opposite of what they say it would do.”

Tingen, on the other hand, said it’s a good thing the Building Code Council is made up of industry professionals because that makes it a bulwark against the International Code Council.

“We are not going to blindly follow the ICC … They are committee’d to death, and it is inspectors who make their rules. They don’t consider costs.

“We didn’t have to invite public and industry comment at the December meeting. This is a simple policy decision. We can put the state on whatever cycle we choose.”