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May 8, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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NIST | USPTO | ANSI | IEEE | ICC | ASTM | ASHRAE | UL | TIA | ASME | ASCE | AGA

Michigan Standards Developers : NSF | ACI | NETA | ASABE | HL7 | RIA | JCSEE | BIFMA | PJRFSI | SAE

Global: SA | BSA | NSAI | CSA | CEN & CENELEC | ISO & IEC*

 

APPA was founded at the University of Michigan| See our ABOUT

 

 

* ISO and IEC have opted out of the X-social media platforms.  FYI: X is 13 times the size of BlueSky in terms of scale and reach.

Commercial Kitchens

May 8, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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2026 PUBLIC COMMENT AGENDA | Complete Monograph 2087 Pages

2025 GROUP B PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE I-CODES: Complete Monograph (2630 pages)

Quick View of Results

36 kitchen related proposals were reviewed during our precious sesssion

2024 GROUP A PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE I-CODES: Complete Monograph (2658 pages)

Commercial kitchens offer several benefits, such as efficient food preparation and large-scale production, allowing businesses to meet high demand. They provide professional-grade equipment and ample space, enabling chefs to explore culinary creativity. Commercial kitchens also promote hygiene and food safety standards, with dedicated cleaning protocols and inspections. However, hazards can arise from the high-temperature cooking equipment, sharp tools, and potentially hazardous substances. There is also a risk of burns, slips, and falls, emphasizing the importance of proper training and safety measures. Adequate ventilation and fire safety systems are vital to prevent accidents and maintain a healthy working environment.

The International Code Council is re-configuring its code development process in nearly every dimension. While that situation stabilizes let us review the back-and-forth on this topic during the previous revision cycle (linked below):

2021 International Building Code Section 306 Factory Group F Moderate Hazard

2021 International Fire Code Section 606 Commercial Cooking Equipment and Systems

The International Code Council has recently re-configured its code development calendar:

2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE

Public hearings on the proposed changes happen in Orlando, April 7-16.

This is a summary of the actions taken on the 2024 Comments on Proposed Changes to the ICC International Codes at the October 23-28, 2024 Committee Action Hearings #2 held at the Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, California.  Balloting of local building code officials is now underway.

 

Commercial kitchen electrical power wiring requirements are covered extensively in Article 210 through Article 215 of the National Electrical Code.  Standards action in this domain is referred to IEEE Education & Healthcare Facility Committee.

ASHRAE International: Calculating Airflow Rates, Cooking Loads in Commercial Kitchens

Related

International Mechanical Code: Chapter 10 Boilers, Water Heaters and Pressure Vessels

AGA Response to The Atlantic Article about Natural Gas Cooking

Thomas Edison State University: Undergraduate Certificate in Gas Distribution

International Fire Code

School Bonds Iowa

May 8, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Preliminary Official Statements

Fairfield Community School District IA: ~$12.5M Tax Revenue Bonds School infrastructure

Open order period May 13, 2026

South Hamilton Comm School District IA: ~$22.3M Infrastructure Sales Tax Rev School facilities

Open order period May 13, 2026

Aplington-Parkersburg Comm School District IA: ~$6.9M Sales/Services/Use Tax Rev Infrastructure

Open order period May 27, 2026

Iowa

Tax-Free Bonds

Katie @K84IAST8 IL Farmgirl-Iowa State Grad-Married an Iowa farmer. *some would say that’s a trifecta*

The Agentic World — where autonomous AI agents independently perceive data, reason through plans, make decisions, and execute complex tasks with minimal human input — will transform school bond trading (a key segment of the ~$4 trillion municipal bond market). School bonds (general obligation or revenue bonds issued by districts for buildings, renovations, etc.) are currently traded over-the-counter in a fragmented, relatively illiquid, and opaque market.   In the Agentic World, school bond trading would become faster, cheaper, more transparent, and accessible — potentially saving school districts billions in interest costs over time while giving investors better tools and returns. The “muni market” is already moving this direction with algorithmic/AI trading and platforms; agentic AI would accelerate it into a truly autonomous, intelligent fixed-income ecosystem.  This is an emerging shift (early pilots and tools exist as of 2026), so exact timelines depend on regulation, data standards, and adoption.

Late Night Breakfast

May 7, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Standards Minnesota

2025 Net Position: 1.992B (Page 4) $ Minnesota State System Capital Asset Procedure

Despite its official mission branding statements that emphasize academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, and diversity, the sub rosa of Carleton College is ferociously liberal Democrat — something like 7:1 — which challenges claims in its “marketing materials”.  One can trace the origin of its political homophily with the Democratic Party’s roots the 1849 with the territory’s founding and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party emerging from 19th- and 20th-century immigrant settlements. Scandinavian (especially Finnish) and other European immigrants settled rural and Iron Range areas, bringing cooperative traditions, socialist ideas, and a strong emphasis on education and mutual aid. They established consumer cooperatives, workers’ halls, and educational programs promoting literacy, labor organizing, and progressive values (which, to the far less ferocious partisans of limited central government, were regressive and contradictory to the American ethos of self-reliance).  These networks fueled a powerful third party backed by farmers, miners, and urban workers.  A cacophony of splinter groups eventually merged to forge Minnesota’s dominant expansive government ethos, blending agrarian populism, labor activism, and community organizing.  In the fullness of time the citizens of Minnesota effectively recreated the restrictive constitutional monarchies its founding stock sought to leave behind.  Way up there in the snowy Great Plains of America Carleton College remains one of the most ferociously liberal Democrat colleges in the United States and among the most beautiful (Skinner Memorial Chapel).

Relata: Universities Are Creating a New Dark Age | Lord Nigel Bigger

Minnesota

 

Disaster 500

May 7, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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During today’s session we approach disaster avoidance, management and recovery literature from a different point of view than our customary approach — i.e. what happens when, a) there is failure to conform to the standard, b) there is no applicable standard at all.  This approach necessarily requires venturing into the regulatory and legal domains.  We will confine our approach to the following standards development regimes:

  1. De facto standards: These are standards that are not officially recognized or endorsed by any formal organization or government entity, but have become widely adopted by industry or through market forces. Examples include the QWERTY keyboard layout and the MP3 audio format.
  2. De jure standards: These are standards that are formally recognized and endorsed by a government or standard-setting organization. Examples include the ISO 9000 quality management standard and the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard.
  3. Consortium standards: These are standards that are developed and maintained by a group of industry stakeholders or organizations, often with the goal of advancing a particular technology or product. Examples include the USB and Bluetooth standards, which are maintained by the USB Implementers Forum and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, respectively.
  4. Open standards: These are standards that are freely available and can be used, implemented, and modified by anyone without restriction. Examples include the HTML web markup language and the Linux operating system.
  5. Proprietary standards: These are standards that are owned and controlled by a single organization, and may require payment of licensing fees or other restrictions for use or implementation. Examples include the Microsoft Office document format and the Adobe PDF document format.
  6. ANSI accredited standards developers with disaster management catalogs

We may have time to review State of Emergency laws on the books of most government agencies; with special attention to power blackout disasters.

Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.

Case Briefings

Managing Disaster with Blockchain, Cloud & IOT

Readings / Emergency Telecommunication Plans

Homeland Power Security

Stalking the Black Swan

May 7, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Stalking the Black Swan

Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility

Kenneth A. Posner

 

 

 

 

Storm Shelters

May 7, 2026
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Current Code Development Cycle: 2024–2026

Happening Now: Groups A&B Public Comment Hearings

March 12, 2026

 

2024 GROUP A PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE I-CODES

Latest News and Documents

“Landscape between Storms” 1841 Auguste Renoir

 

When is it ever NOT storm season somewhere in the United States; with several hundred schools, colleges and universities in the path of them? Hurricanes also spawn tornadoes. This title sets the standard of care for safety, resilience and recovery when education community structures are used for shelter and recovery.  The most recently published edition of the joint work results of the International Code Council and the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute SEI-7 is linked below:

2020 ICC/NSSA 500 Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters.

Given the historic tornados in the American Midwest this weekend, its relevance is plain.  From the project prospectus:

The objective of this Standard is to provide technical design and performance criteria that will facilitate and promote the design, construction, and installation of safe, reliable, and economical storm shelters to protect the public. It is intended that this Standard be used by design professionals; storm shelter designers, manufacturers, and constructors; building officials; and emergency management personnel and government officials to ensure that storm shelters provide a consistently high level of protection to the sheltered public.

This project runs roughly in tandem with the ASCE Structural Engineering Institute SEI-17 which has recently updated its content management system and presented challenges to anyone who attempts to find the content where it used to be before the website overhaul.    In the intervening time, we direct stakeholders to the link to actual text (above) and remind education facility managers and their architectural/engineering consultants that the ICC Code Development process is open to everyone.

The ICC receives public response to proposed changes to titles in its catalog at the link below:

Standards Public Forms

2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE

You are encouraged to communicate with Kimberly Paarlberg (kpaarlberg@iccsafe.org) for detailed, up to the moment information.  When the content is curated by ICC staff it is made available at the link below:

ICC cdpACCESS

We maintain this title on the agenda of our periodic Disaster colloquia which approach this title from the point of view of education community facility managers who collaborate with structual engineers, architects and emergency management functionaries..   See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting, open to everyone.

Readings:

FEMA: Highlights of ICC 500-2020

ICC 500-2020 Standard and Commentary: ICC/NSSA Design and Construction of Storm Shelters

IEEE: City Geospatial Dashboard: IoT and Big Data Analytics for Geospatial Solutions Provider in Disaster Management

 

Risk Assessment in Emergency Facilities

May 7, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com

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Critical Operations Power Systems: Improving Risk Assessment in Emergency Facilities with Reliability Engineering

University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, Michigan
HP Critical Facilities Services | Bethesda, Maryland
Mark Beirne

DLB Associates | Chicago, Illinois

Abstract. The key feature of this article is the application of quantitative method for evaluating risk and conveying the results into a power system design that is scaled according to hazards present in any given emergency management district. These methods employ classical lumped parameter modeling of power chain architectures and can be applied to any type of critical facility, whether it is a stand-alone structure, or a portion of stand-alone structure, such as a police station or government center. This article will provide a risk assessment roadmap for one of the most common critical facilities that should be designated as COPS per NEC 708-a 911 call center. The existing methods of reliability engineering will be used in the risk assessment.

 

* Robert Schuerger is the lead author on this paper

CLICK HERE to order complete article: IEEE Industry Applications Magazine | Volume 19 Issue 5 • Sept.-Oct.-2013

 

Critical Operations Power Systems

May 7, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Disaster 500


The original University of Michigan codes and standards enterprise advocated actively in Article 708 Critical Operations Power Systems (COPS) of the National Electrical Code (NEC) because of the elevated likelihood that the education facility industry managed assets that were likely candidates for designation critical operations areas by emergency management authorities.

Because the NEC is incorporated by reference into most state and local electrical safety laws, it saw the possibility that some colleges and universities — particularly large research universities with independent power plants, telecommunications systems and large hospitals  — would be on the receiving end of an unfunded mandate.   Many education facilities are identified by the Federal Emergency Management Association as community storm shelters, for example.

As managers of publicly owned assets, University of Michigan Plant Operations had no objection to rising to the challenge of using publicly owned education facilities for emergency preparedness and disaster recovery operations; only that meeting the power system reliability requirements to the emergency management command centers would likely cost more than anyone imagined — especially at the University Hospital and the Public Safety Department facilities.  Budgets would have to be prepared to make critical operations power systems (COPS) resistant to fire and flood damages; for example.

Collaboration with the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Industrial Applications Society began shortly after the release of the 2007 NEC.  Engineering studies were undertaken, papers were published (see links below) and the inspiration for the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee developed to provide a gathering place for power, telecommunication and energy professionals to discover and promulgate leading practice.   That committee is now formally a part of IEEE and collaborates with IAS/PES JTCC assigned the task of harmonizing NFPA and IEEE electrical safety and sustainability consensus documents (codes, standards, guidelines and recommended practices.

Transcripts of 2026 Revision:

Public Input Report CMP-13

Public Comment Report CMP-13

The transcript of NEC Code Making Panel 13 — the committee that revises COPS Article 708 every three years — is linked below:

NEC CMP-13 First Draft Balloting

NEC CMP-13 Second Draft Balloting

The 2023 Edition of the National Electrical Code does not contain revisions that affect #TotalCostofOwnership — only refinement of wiring installation practices when COPS are built integral to an existing building that will likely raise cost.  There are several dissenting comments to this effect and they all dissent because of cost.   Familiar battles over overcurrent coordination persist.

Our papers and proposals regarding Article 708 track a concern for power system reliability — and the lack of power  — as an inherent safety hazard.   These proposals are routinely rejected by incumbent stakeholders on NEC technical panels who do not agree that lack of power is a safety hazard.  Even if lack of power is not a safety hazard, reliability requirements do not belong in an electrical wiring installation code developed largely by electricians and fire safety inspectors.  The IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee (IEEE E&H) maintains a database on campus power outages; similar to the database used by the IEEE 1366 committees that develop reliability indices to enlighten public utility reliability regulations.

Public input on the 2026 revision to the NEC will be received until September 7th.  We have reserved a workspace for our priorities in the link below:

2026 National Electrical Code Workspace

Colleagues: Robert Arno, Neal Dowling, Jim Harvey

 

LEARN MORE:

IEEE | Critical Operations Power Systems: Improving Risk Assessment in Emergency Facilities with Reliability Engineering

Consuting-Specifying Engineer | Risk Assessments for Critical Operations Power Systems

Electrical Construction & Maintenance | Critical Operations Power Systems

International City County Management Association | Critical Operations Power Systems: Success of the Imagination

Facilities Manager | Critical Operations Power Systems: The Generator in Your Backyard

Speech Day

May 6, 2026
mike@standardsmichigan.com
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Speech Day generally refers to an annual event held at schools in the United Kingdom, particularly private or independent schools, where students showcase their achievements and receive prizes or awards. The exact date of “Speech Day” varies by school and is typically determined by the school’s academic calendar. It is usually held towards the end of the academic year, either in the summer term or in the early autumn term, before students break for the summer holidays.

Westonbirt School

 

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