IBC Means of Egress

ICC staff is now working with volunteer technical committee members to prepare public comments for the Public Comment Hearings next month.  The Group A Codes have hundreds of proposals to act upon so it is wise for ICC staff prepare these comments in order for them to be fairly balloted by volunteer technical committee members at the Group A Code Hearings next month.

ICC Group A Public Comment Monograph

We have been following means of egress concept development which profoundly affect how any facility type is designed, built and operated safety.  Those concepts are listed in the link below and they are non-trivial:

ICC 2018-2019 Code Development Cycle MOE Concepts

We encourage user-interest subject matter experts on the direct payroll of a school district, college or university to communicate with ICC staff to contribute to the next revision of the International Building Code healthcare facility sections.   Colleges and universities in the Richmond Virginia region should find it relatively easy to attend.  Contact: Kimberly Paarlberg (kpaarlberg@iccsafe.org).

Additionally, we are hosting an online breakout worksession for our clients and visitors today — September 11th, at 11 AM.  Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.

Posted June 30, 2018

The International Code Council released the 2018 Report of the Committee Action Hearings on the 2018 Editions of the Group A International Codes two weeks ago.  The 313 page monograph linked below contains the results of the balloting of all Group A codes:

Report: 2018 – 2019 Code Development Cycle Group A

Public comments are due July 16th.  These concepts will eventually be incorporated by reference into state building codes and thereby affect #TotalCostofOwnership.

We have begun our examination of the monograph regarding means of egress concepts — for which the ICC has a designated committee — with special attention to the concepts that will effect planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the built environment for the education industry.   Means of egress (MOE) concepts inform the application of all other building technologies such as mechanical, electrical, fire protection and security systems.   Egress concepts developed by the ICC are conveyed into NFPA’s National Electrical Code, for example.   Mechanical systems for smoke control are designed around egress concepts.  The number and orientation of occupant access and egress points is high on the agenda of public safety professionals charged with protecting educational campus communities.

A listing of means of egress concepts that appear in the monograph has been distilled by the ICC Building Code Action Committee and is linked below:

ICC 2018-2019 Code Development Cycle MOE Concepts

We have set aside two working sessions to examine and prepare responses to the ICC invitation for public comment.

July 12th: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

June 21st: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

We welcome the participation of subject matter experts who service the education industry who are skilled in marking up legislative documents such as the International Building Code.  Additionally, we keep all ICC consensus products on the agenda of our weekly Open Door teleconference (which we host every Wednesday, 11 AM Eastern time).  Anyone is welcomed to join us with the login information linked below:

Contact

Original post: April 23, 2018

Greater Columbus Convention Center | ICC Group A Code Hearings April 15-25, 2018The International Code Council (ICC) will host the final day of hearings on candidate revisions to its Group A Codes.   These include the International Building Code which establishes the standard of care for design, construction, operation and maintenance of education and university-affiliated healthcare facilities, in most of the United States   The hearings — 10 days for about 12 hours each day — are an impressive event which is livestreamed at the link  below.

Webcast

As we have for the past several revision cycles, we encourage our facility colleagues to “click in” to the hearings if they cannot attend the hearings in person in Columbus, Ohio.   (Registration information).    During the hearings we will post some of the safety and sustainability concepts we have been advocating — either by presenting a new concept of our own or by supporting the concepts of other user-interests — on the site linked below:

Workspace for ICC 2018 Group A Hearings

The order in which the proposals will be heard appears on Page 979 of the Complete Monograph

We generally pay closer attention to proposals dealing with electrotechnology (power, telecommunications, signaling, #SmartCampus, etc.) because — as it should be clear from viewing the livestream — that building inspectors and fire safety professionals are comparatively well-funded.  Their role in upholding the safety of the built environment is understood by local and state agencies and their participation is built into public safety budget.  The IEEE Education & Healthcare Committee is following the trajectory of a number of proposals submitted to the ICC Group A technical committees and discusses them during its bi-weekly teleconferences.

Public comments on the results of the Spring Hearings are due on July 16th. The results of the Group A Hearings will be revisited during the Group A Public Comment Hearings, October 24-31, 2018 in Richmond Virginia.  See: Complete 2018 Group A Schedule

Eastern Michigan University

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International (APCO) has released for public review a draft of its standard APCO 1.113.1 Incident Handling Process.  From the project prospectus:

The standard will take the call-handling process from its root. Starting with the call-delivery mechanism of the equipment, which can affect the call handling initiation, it will continue to the actual triage of the call to its dissemination. The goal is to bring the call-handling process into full circle from the initiation of the call through the caller triage and finally into the dissemination of information. This will include the continued support of responders through the dissemination portion.

Comments are due September 3rd.  You will find more information about the document and APCO’s public commenting process at the link below:

APCO Standards Workspace

You may obtain an electronic copy from: apcostandards@apcointl.org.  You may send your comments to that email address with copy to psa@ansi.org.   All APCO standards are on the standing agenda of our weekly Open Agenda teleconference — every Wednesday, 11 AM Eastern time.

Issue: [18-206]

Category: Public Safety, Risk Management

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Richard Robben

ANSI Standards Action | Page 3

Many design guidelines, construction, and facility management service contracts continue to reference the IEEE Color Books as the standard of care for industrial and commercial power systems even though the Color Books are being sunsetted and replaced by the IEEE 3000 Standards Collection™.   This needs to change.  Technical content that used to reside within articulated chapters in the Color Books is now being updated and spun off (by IEEE industrial and commercial power system engineers) into smaller, faster-moving consensus documents; similar to the consensus documents produced by the International Electrotechnical Commission.

Several “dot standards” with candidate revisions are now open for public review^[1]; among them IEEE 3006.3 Recommended Practice for Determining the Impact of Preventative Maintenance on the Reliability of Industrial and Commercial Power Systems.   This recommended practice describes how to determine the impact of preventive maintenance on the reliability of industrial and commercial power systems. It is likely to be of greatest value to the power-oriented engineer with limited experience in the area of reliability. It can also be an aid to all engineers responsible for the electrical design of industrial and commercial power systems.

IEEE 3006.3 is among several other dot standards that are now open for public review:  ANSI Standards Action | PDF Pages 13-18.   We focus on power system maintenance ahead of the 2018 football season because the safety and success of these events depends upon reliable power; and reliable power depends upon appropriate maintenance.

Comments are due October 16, 2018.  There are several ways to participate in the revision process.

• Communicate directly with IEEE Standards Association for a review copy.  Contact: Pat Roder (p.roder@ieee.org).
• Submit your comments on the IEEE-SA Public Review landing page.
• Join the bi-weekly teleconferences of the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee where discussion about resource allocation toward campus power system maintenance in service of reliability is a standing item.  The IEEE E&H committee has several years of campus power system outage data which is in the process of being refined for use by education industry electrical engineers; similar to the formal treatment given to the reliability indices in the care of IEEE Distribution Reliability Working Group.^[2]

All IEEE standards are on the standing agenda of the Standards Michigan Open Agenda teleconference — every Wednesday, 11 AM Eastern time.  Login information is available at the top-right of our home page.

Issue: [18-235]

Category: Electrical, Public Safety, Risk Management

Contact: Mike Anthony, Robert Arno, Neil Dowling, Jim Harvey, Robert Schuerger

[1] ANSI Standards Action | PDF Pages 13-18.

[2] IEEE 1366 Guide for Electric Power Distribution Reliability Indices is used in many jurisdictions for benchmarking regulated public utility power system reliability.