Category Archives: @IntlCodeCouncil

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Chores

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Living off-campus provides students with autonomy, independence, and lower costs, but it also requires greater responsibility and may present challenges such as commuting time, social isolation, and safety concerns about the property itseld.  We provide direct access to a widely reference standard of care with specific passages about heating, cooling, plumbing electrical systems

Benefits:

  1. More freedom and independence: Off-campus housing can provide students with more autonomy and independence than living on-campus. Students can choose their own roommates, decorate their own space, and set their own rules.
  2. Lower costs: In some cases, off-campus housing can be more affordable than on-campus housing. Students may be able to find lower rent prices or split costs with roommates.
  3. More space: Off-campus housing may offer more living space than on-campus housing, allowing students to spread out and feel more comfortable.
  4. Opportunity to learn life skills: Living off-campus can help students develop important life skills, such as budgeting, grocery shopping, cooking, and maintaining a household.
  5. More privacy: Living off-campus can offer more privacy than on-campus housing, allowing students to have more control over their living environment and social interactions.

Costs:

  1. Commuting time and expense: Living off-campus may require a longer commute to classes, which can be time-consuming and costly. Students may need to pay for transportation or purchase a car.
  2. Greater responsibility: Living off-campus requires greater responsibility and independence than living on-campus. Students must manage their own bills, maintenance, and household tasks.
  3. Social isolation: Living off-campus may make it harder for students to connect with their peers and participate in campus activities. They may feel more isolated or disconnected from the college community.
  4. Greater risk of safety concerns: Living off-campus can increase the risk of safety concerns, such as crime, accidents, and emergencies. Students may need to take extra precautions to ensure their own safety.
  5. Difficulty with roommate relationships: Off-campus housing can strain roommate relationships due to the greater responsibility and shared living arrangements. Conflicts over finances, cleaning, and social activities can arise and be harder to manage.


Hammurabi

The world’s first building codes were put in action in ancient Babylon by King Hammurabi around 1754 BCE.   The codes were a subset of the larger Code of Hammurabi and were designed to regulate the construction of buildings in the city of Babylon. These codes emerged from a time of great social and economic change in Babylon. The city* was rapidly expanding, and the construction of new buildings was essential for accommodating the growing population. 

Famously, building unsafe buildings carried “risk” to the builder:

“If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.”  (Law 229, Sacred Texts)

Fast forward 3700 years and construction litigation is Big Business.  According to research by one of the first names in construction dispute research (Arcadis) the the average cost of construction disputes in North America is $19.6 million with an average length of was 15.2 months (2020 data).   

When university-affiliated healthcare facilities are included in the count, the education industry is the largest non-residential building construction market in the United States at about $100 billion every year.

Ædificare

Hanging Gardens of Babylon | National Geographic

We meet at the usual time today for a status check on public commenting opportunities on best practice titles that set the standard of care for designing, building and operating the physical spaces of education communities.   In the past we have limited our coverage to the International Code Council suite.   Today we expand our interest to other model building codes; a few of them listed below:

Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures (7-16)

International Building Code

Building Construction and Safety Code

Eurocodes

National Building Code of Canada

To a surprising degree these bodies borrow safety concepts from one another; owing to field experience, technological changes. response to government regulation regarding disasters and accessibility, among others.   Some of the concepts we have been tracking:

Use of education facilities as storm shelters

Occupancy classifications

Carbon monoxide detection and alarms

Electric vehicle power supply from new buildings

Daylight responsive lighting controls

Scope of work in alterations

Enhanced classroom acoustics

Security (door locking, access, etc.)

Assemblies, laboratories, sport facilities, etc, etc, etc.

(Plenty to do)

We will pick through the transcript of the ICC Group B Public Comment Monograph to estimate the state of the debate ahead of this month’s meetings in Lexington:

LIVE: I-Code Group B Public Comment Hearings

 

Our meeting today at 11 AM/ET is open to everyone.  Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.

Standing Agenda / Model Building Codes


LEARN MORE:

Videography:

Occupant Load

How is occupant load determined by the Life Safety Code

ADA Size and Clearance Requirements for Doors

Birth of Building Codes: Building Code of Hammurabi

Cambridge University Press: Roman Builders – A Study in Architectural Process

* The modern-day name of Babylon is Al Hillah, which is a city in central Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad. It is located on the east bank of the Euphrates River and was once an important cultural and political center in ancient Mesopotamia.

Stairway Lighting

Designing illumination for vertical ingress and egress paths requires reconciliation of competing requirements of safety economy: 

Consistent and Adequate Lighting: Shadows and dark spots should be minimized to prevent trips and falls.

Light Direction and Glare: Light fixtures should be positioned to avoid creating excessive contrast between steps.

Staircase Configuration: Staircases come in various shapes, sizes, and configurations, such as straight, curved, or spiral. 

Light Distribution:  Lighting should adequately cover the entire stair tread and riser area to provide clear visibility and depth perception.

Energy Efficiency:  Specifying energy-efficient light sources such as light emitting diodes and lighting controls such as motion sensors or timers.

Maintenance and Durability: Scaffolding safety should be a peak consideration.

Some of the foregoing challenges can be resolved with the use of handrail illumination but are accompanied by additional electrical wiring requirements. 

Chazen Museum of Art | University of Wisconsin

 

The parent standard in the United States for designing and building facilities for accessibility is ANSI/A117.1 Standard for Accessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities developed by the International Code Council.   During 2023 this title will be revised but until then he 2017 release is the stabilized edition:

FREE ACCESS (ICC DIGITAL CODE PLATFORM)

Many A117.1 concepts require coordination with the International Building Code.  We provide an example regarding stairway illumination below:

BCAC General 5 – IBC A117.1 Coordination 11-20-1027 File 16-124

We walked through this earlier in 2020.  It is noteworthy because the proposed safety concepts will likely require harmonization with NFPA and IEEE standards bibliography.  Committees usually take it upon themselves to get that right but getting it right means all committees need to work bi-directionally; action that is limited by time resources of volunteers.

Technical specifics in meeting the US Department of Justice requirements for accessibility is close coupled with A117 since it is incorporated by reference into federal law.   2021/2022 Code Development Cycle has been completed and another cycle has begun:

2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE

ICC (ASC A117) CONSENSUS COMMITTEE ON A117.1 04-27-2023 Minutes 31

Since the ICC catalog cuts across many disciplines we touch most titles almost every day at 15:00 UTC; open to everyone with the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.

 

Issue: [13-36] and [16-124]

Category: Architectural, Risk Management

Colleagues: Richard Robben


FYI: Errata to 2017 Edition:

Errata to ICC A117.1-2017

 

 


LIVE: I-Code Group B Public Comment Hearings

The ICC Group B Public Comment Hearings will be held September 14 – September 18 in Lexington Kentucky.  CLICK HERE for the landing page for the event, schedule and links to substantive technical content.  The hearings are typically webcast so we will follow them every day.

CLICK IMAGE to access webcast

The public comment agenda is linked below:

Complete Monograph: 2022 Group B Public Comment Agenda

The ICC typically provides a link to the monograph — which includes public comments on all titles for the present Group B cycle — ahead of the meetings.  We look forward to the restoration of that link which was available a few days ago but, today, has gone missing.

It is a long document — the better part of 2000 pages — and must be undergoing revision.  In the standards domain, everything is under revision; by definition.  Use search terms such as “school”, “student”, “college”, “university”, “hospital”, etc.  Keep in mind that there are two other title groupings — A & B — in the ICC catalog.


Update: March 30

2022 Group B Committee Action Hearings

Rochester, New York | March 27 – April 6, 2022

 

2022 GROUP B PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE I-CODES: COMPLETE MONOGRAPH (1971 Pages)

 

Codes and same concepts now under consideration in the Group B Cycle:

• Code Administrative Provisions

• International Building Code – Structural

Wind and snow load maps, calculations and calculators
Resilience of education facilities as storm shelters
Guardrails for fall safety
Photovoltaic system roof load on education facilities

Roueche, D.B., Nakayama, J., Department of Civil Engineering, Auburn University Ginn College of Engineering, “Quantification of Common Wind
Damage Patterns in Recent Windstorms.” May 2021

• International Existing Building Code

Mold control in school buildings
Adult and children changing stations

• International Performance Code for Buildings and Facilities

• International Green Construction Code (Chapter 1)

Roof mounted photovoltaic systems

• International Residential Code

Use of residences as daycare facilities
Smoke alarm audibility in sleeping rooms
Hemp house construction

 

More

Cost Impact Guide

 

 

Tiny Houses

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Off-Campus Residential Class Property

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Stadium & Arena Structural Engineering

“Colossus of Rhodes” | Ancient History Encyclopedia

 

One of the marquee assets of many colleges and universities, among the costliest and most publicly visible, is the sports and recreation arena.  Some large research universities have several of them (football, hockey, basketball, track & field, etc.) — with capacities upward of 100,000 seats– which have proven structurally safe owing to the American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE SEI) suite of engineering standards; developed in close coupled with the International Code Council (ICC).   Structural engineering is a fairly rarefied space in which much depends upon the inherited wisdom inspiration of generations of mathematically skilled practitioners who make the inspired imagination of an architect a reality.

We began tracking ASCE SEI standards action in 2013 with special attention to the live loading design requirement of libraries (which were dominated by stacks of books) and the replacement of libraries with media centers (with significantly fewer books).    As our legacy workspace* should reveal, we simply raised the question about space usage assumptions.  As we explain in our ABOUT there is no education industry trade association; nor any single education facility unit, that was any authority; nor any advocacy track-record, nor any primary interest in advocating for a coordinated revisit of the structural engineering safety requirements for an occupancy and use patterns that have changed.

We limit our resources to advocating for closer coordination between the ASCE and ICC titles regarding occupancy definitions and space usage.  Noteworthy proposals from the previous revision cycle:

  • Proposal S53-19 | Page 422 | Table 1607 clarifications for stadiums and arena with fixed seats and bleachers
  • Proposal S58-19 | Page 430 | Table 1607.1 regarding folding and telescopic seating and horizontal sway loads
  • Proposal S92-19 | Page 476 Section 1704.6 regarding structural observations for seismic resistance
  • Proposal EB108-19 | Page 888 Section 1106 regarding education facilities — including arenas — as storm shelters (covered here previously in a separate post)

Owners, architects and structural engineers will likely spend less time “figuring out what the code means” with respect to occupancy definition and user usage patterns.   You may read proposals from the previous revision cycle in their entirety by accessing the documents linked below:

Complete Monograph ICC Committee Action Hearings

2019 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ACTION HEARINGS ON THE 2018 EDITIONS OF THE GROUP B INTERNATIONAL CODES

We are hard upon the 2021/2022 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE so we have time ahead of the January 10, 2021 deadline to read the current code, review the transcripts of the back-and-forth that went into it, and formulate new proposals.  Data-rich proposals are always welcomed.

We maintain this topic on the standing agenda of our Ædificare and Sport colloquia.  See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting, open to everyone.

Issue: [16-169]

Category: Architectural, Facility Asset Management, Space Planning

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jack Janveja, Richard Robben, Jerry Schulte

13-68 Structural Design ASCE SEI 7

 


More

Short history of structural failures and collapses

Workspace / ICC

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