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International Property Maintenance Code

In most jurisdictions the standard of care for operation and maintenance of education facilities is discovered and promulgated by a “fabric” of consensus products developed by a kind of “shadow government” created by a network of non-profit publishers; among them the International Code Council.  The ICC has one of the most dynamic catalogs in the construction industry and today we drill into the the International Property Maintenance Code which completed another revision cycle in 2021.   Operation and maintenance of education facilities is the (much larger) part of #TotalCostofOwnership of the real assets of a school district, college or university.  Public access to most recent revision to the IPMC is linked below:

 2021 International Property Maintenance Code

The transcript of public comment on the 2021 revision provides insight into the back-and-forth among the technical committee experts:

2021 IPMC Group A Public Comment Agenda

Note the concern for swimming pools, radon, light, ventilation and occupancy limits.

The ICC Group A tranche of titles will undergo another cyclic revision starting in 2023.  Since so much of the ICC catalog underlies occupancy safety for education, healthcare and nearly all other aspects of the built environment we track the action on a near-daily basis.  You may join any of our daily colloquia, shown on our CALENDAR, or interact directly with the ICC with the link below:

 cdpACCESS

2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE

The ICC catalog is regarded as the most authoritative for education facility management.  We maintain the IPMC on the standing agenda of our Hammurabi and Interiors colloquia.  See our CALENDAR for the next colloquium; open to everyone.

 

Meeting Point

Issue: [Various]

Category: Architectural, Facility Asset Management, Space Planning

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

More


 

International Standard Classification of Education

“Etudes Graphiques” | Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890

“I am not an Athenian or a Greek,

but a citizen of the world.”

— (Plato quoting Socrates, Phaedo 64a)

 

ISCED 2011 is an updated version of the previous classification, ISCED 1997, and provides a framework for organizing education programs according to their level of complexity and content. The classification is designed to facilitate the comparison of education systems across countries and regions, and to improve the collection, reporting, and analysis of education statistics.

ISCED 2011 introduces several changes and updates, such as the introduction of a new level of education called “early childhood education,” the expansion of the tertiary education level to include short-cycle tertiary education, and the inclusion of a separate category for vocational education at the secondary level. The classification also includes detailed descriptions of the content and characteristics of each education level, as well as guidelines for classifying educational programs that do not fit neatly into the existing categories.

ISCED 2011 is widely used by national and international organizations, including UNESCO, to collect and report education data, and it provides a common language for discussing education across borders.



Human Resources 100

Office in a Small City 1953 Edward Hopper

 

“Choose a job you love,

and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Kong Fuzi, Confucius

 

Today we dwell on titles that inform management of the education industry in the United States specifically; but also more generally in global markets where the education industry is classified as a Producer and a User of human resources.  It is an enormous domain; likely the largest.

Human Resources 100 covers skilled trade training in all building construction disciplines.

Vocational Education Act of 1917, or Smith-Hughes Act of 1917

February: Association for Career and Technical Education | #CTEMonth

Human Resources 200 covers the range of skills needed to manage the real assets of educational settings — school district properties, college and university campuses

Human Resources 300 covers higher level management of these settings.  (Representative Organization Charts)

Human Resources 500 covers everything else

Human Resources 500

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

Engineering a Fair Future: Why we need to train unbiased AI

Recommended Reading:

“The Human Side of Enterprise” 1960 by Douglas McGregor | MIT Management Sloan School

University of Chicago Press: Readings in Managerial Psychology

I've searched all the parks in all the cities - and found no statues of Committees. - Gilbert K. Chesterton

 

More

Lee Webster

Virginia Commonwealth University: “Self Reliance” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Paris Review: The Myth of Self-Reliance

Using ANSI Human Resource Standards to Create Business Advantage in the Workplace

Colleges and Organizational Structure of Universities

Apprenticeships: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice

“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” James Damore

 

Electrical Inspector Professional Qualifications

Electrical Training

Compact Muon Solenoid / European Organization for Nuclear Research

NFPA 1078 Standard for Electrical Inspector Professional Qualifications identifies the minimum job performance requirements for electrical inspectors.   Qualifications for electrical inspectors are heavily regulated by state public safety agencies.   Many, if not most electrical inspectors are former electricians.   This means that part of their career has been spent working as an  Labor/Installer/Maintenance stakeholder, and another part of their career has been spend as an Enforcement stakeholder.  (See NFPA Classification of Committee Members).   This can be a sensitive condition in large research universities that have a resident full-time enforcement staff ; the subject of a separate post.

Free access to the current 2024 edition is linked below:

NFPA 1078 2024 Free Access

The 2028 revision is now open for public input.  It is always enlightening to follow the transcripts of the previous revision cycles to see what ideas have been in play.

Public Input Report

Electrical Inspection Practices (EEP-AAA)

Professional Qualifications (PQU-AAC)

 

Public input on the 2028 revision will be received until June 4, 2025

We have found that passions are elevated among stakeholders whenever compliance and conformance revenue is involved — i.e. in any consensus product that covers labor (i.e. billable hours).

We include this standard on the standing agenda of our monthly Human Resource, Power and Infotech teleconferences.   See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.

"One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other, "My little computer said such a funny thing this morning" - Alan Turing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animals 300

“The Peaceable Kingdom” 1833 Edward Hicks

Today we scan the status of literature that informs the safety and sustainability of the built environment for animals large and small.  Animals are found in education communities as pets. sporting partners, agricultural research and teaching settings, as medical research subjects and clinical care facilities.  ANSI-Accredited standards developers with a footprint in this domain are listed below:

American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers

Agriculture

ASHRAE International

Plant and Animal Environment

Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

Animal Kingdom: A Large and Diverse Dataset for Animal Behavior Understanding

International Code Council

Form v. Function | Function v. Form

National Fire Protection Association

Animal Safety

Underwriters Laboratories

Government agencies at all levels borrow from best practice recommendations in the catalog of the foregoing standards developers.  Conversely, those same standards developers borrow from the best practice recommendations from the same government agencies.

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

Sunday, Animal, Farm, Agri

More

The Ethics of Farming Animals

Animal Welfare Act

National Research Council: Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals

National Library of Medicine: Regulation of Animal Research

Most education communities use the foregoing regulations upon which to build their own standards.  For example:

George Washington University

Stanford University

University of Michigan

Michigan State University


 

Terrestrial Animal Health Code

Rewind: Animals 100

Educational Settlement Finance

Giovanni Paolo Panini, An architectural capriccio with figures among Roman ruins

The post-pandemic #WiseCampus transformation requires significant capital to meet the sustainability goals of its leadership.  Campuses are cities-within-cities and are, to a fair degree, financed in a similar fashion.  Tax-free bonds are an effective instrument for school districts, colleges and universities — and the host community in which they are nested — for raising capital for infrastructure projects while also providing investors with, say $10,000 to $100,000, to allocate toward a tax-free dividend income stream that produces a return in the range of 2 to 8 percent annually.

An aging population may be receptive to investment opportunities that protect their retirement savings from taxation.

Once a month, we walk through the prospectuses of one or two bond offerings of school districts, colleges and universities and examine offering specifics regarding infrastructure construction, operations and maintenance.  We pay particular attention to details regarding “continuing operations”. Somehow the education industry has to pay for its green agenda.  See our CALENDAR for the next Finance colloquium; open to everyone.

The interactive map provided by Electronic Municipal Market Access identifies state-by-state listings of tax-free bonds that contribute to the construction and operation of education facilities; some of which involved university-affiliated medical research and healthcare delivery enterprises.

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR INTERACTIVE MAP

 

If you need help cutting through this list please feel free to click in any day at 11 AM Eastern time.  Use the login credentials at the upper right of our hope page.  We collaborate with subject matter experts at Municipal Analytics and UBS.

Issue: [Various]

Category: Administration & Management, Finance, #SmartCampus

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, John Kaczor, Liberty Ziegahn

*We see the pandemic as a driver for a step-reduction in cost in all dimensions of education communities.  We coined the term with a hashtag about two years ago.

*College and university infrastructure projects are classified with public school districts under the rubric “municipal bonds” at the moment.  CLICK HERE for more information.

 


More:

Duke Law Review:  Don’t ‘Screw Joe the Plummer’: The Sausage-Making of Financial Reform

An Expanded Study of School Bond Elections in Michigan

Certifying the Certifiers

Accreditation and certification are relatively modern concepts that have evolved over time as formalized methods of establishing and maintaining standards in various fields. The concept of accreditation or certification, as it is understood today, may not have existed in the same form in the distant past. However, there were likely individuals or groups who played roles similar to that of accreditation or certification specialists in history, although the formalized systems of accreditation or certification that exist today were not present.

For example, in ancient times, there were guilds and associations in various professions that set standards for their members, oversaw training and apprenticeship programs, and ensured the quality of their work. These guilds and associations, which existed in various civilizations such as ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, could be seen as early forms of accreditation or certification bodies.

Similarly, in religious contexts, there were individuals who held authority to certify or accredit others. For instance, in medieval Europe, there were religious orders, such as the Knights Templar, who were known for their specialized skills and were often called upon to certify the expertise of others in their areas of knowledge, such as architecture or finance.

In the field of education, ancient universities and centers of learning, such as the ancient Indian Nalanda University or the Islamic madrasas, could also be seen as early forms of accreditation or certification bodies, where scholars were recognized and certified based on their knowledge and expertise.

However, it’s important to note that the formalized systems of accreditation or certification that we are familiar with today, with standardized processes, documentation, and oversight, have developed over time and are relatively modern phenomena. The history of accreditation or certification is complex and multifaceted, with various practices and traditions that have evolved and influenced the modern systems we have today.

Lingua Franca

Today Only: Acoustic & Sound Standards

 

“The English genius is essentially eclectic;

it borrows from everywhere and from every time.”

— Peter Ackroyd | 2004  Albion: the origins of the English imagination

“The Tower of Babel” 1563 | Pieter Bruegel the Elder

 

“Wer von Fremdsprachen nichts versteht, kennt seine eigenen nichts.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Disagree with someone and cannot persuade them?  Do you need to hide your intransigence or ulterior motive? Then change the basis of discussion by changing the subject with a different definition.

This happens routinely in political discourse and rather frequently in best practice discovery and promulgation in building construction and settlement infrastructure standards[1].  Assuming all parties are negotiating in good faith resolution may lie in agreement on a common understanding of what a satisfying agreement might look like.

Admittedly, a subtle and challenging topic outside our wheelhouse[2] hence the need to improve our organization of this topic starting with today’s colloquium; with follow on sessions every month.

Starting 2025 we will organize our approach to this topic, thus:

Language 100.  Survey of linguistic basics for developing codes, standards and regulations.  Many vertical incumbents have developed their own style manuals

Language 200.  Electrotechnical vocabulary

Language 300.  Architectural and Allied trade vocabulary

Language 400.  The language of government regulations; the euphemisms of politicians with influence over the built environment

Language 500.  Advanced topics such as large language models or spoken dialects such as “High Michigan” — arguably, the standard American dialect where it applies to the standards listed above.

It may not be obvious how profound the choice of words and phrases have on leading practice discovery and promulgation.  For example, “What is Gender” determines the number, placement and functionality of sanitary technologies in housing, hospitals and sporting.   The United States has a Supreme Court justice that cannot define “woman”

As always, we will respond to public consultation opportunities wherever we can find them.  Some organizations are better than this than others.

Large Language Models

Glossary: Education

Examples of Variations in Translations of Homer’s Odyssey

Banished Words 2024

Today we limit our discussion to language changes in the catalogs of ANSI-accredited standards developers whose titles have the most influence over the interoperability of safety and sustainability technologies that create and sustain the built environment of education communities

American Institute of Architects: Definitions for Building Performance 

ASHRAE International

Language Proficiency

International Code Council

Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

National Fire Protection Association

Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?

Using tasks in language teaching

print(“Python”)

Love and Mathematics

The Guy Who Over-Pronounces Foreign Words

Every building construction discipline has its own parlance and terms of art.

This is enough for a one-hour session and, depending upon interest, we will schedule a breakout session outside of our normal “daily” office hours.  Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.

ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΕΣ

Starting 2024 and running into 2025 we will break down this topic further, starting with construction contract language — Lingua Franca 300:

“Standard” History

History of the English Speaking Peoples

Language Proficiency

Geomatics

Large Language Models

Travels with the Sundry Folk

Reflections on the verb “to be”

Banished Words 2024

Forbidden Words

Using tasks in language teaching

William Tyndale: The Father of Modern English

“Music does an end run around language” — James Taylor

Electropedia: The World’s Online Electrotechnical Vocabulary

Standard Definition: “Developing” Country

The Guy Who Over-Pronounces Foreign Words

ANSI Acronymn Dictionary

Footnotes:

(1) The United States government defines a “Green Building” as a building that has been designed, constructed, and operated in a way that reduces or eliminates negative impacts on the environment and occupants. The government has established various standards and certifications that buildings can achieve to be considered “green.”

The most widely recognized green building certification in the United States is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, which is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). To achieve LEED certification, a building must meet certain standards related to sustainable site development, water efficiency, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

In addition to the LEED certification, there are other programs and standards that can be used to measure and certify the sustainability of buildings, such as the Green Globes rating system and the Living Building Challenge.

Overall, the goal of green building is to create buildings that are not only environmentally sustainable but also healthier, more comfortable, and more efficient for occupants, while reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. By promoting green building practices, the U.S. government aims to reduce the environmental impact of the built environment and move towards a more sustainable future.

(2) The U.S. Green Building Council is a conformance organization.  See the discussion our ABOUT for background on incumbent stakeholders.

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