I am going to date myself, but for those of you who remember Hannibal’s iconic line —“I love it when a plan comes together” — it is quite appropriate for me to borrow that quote and apply it to our very own SEI Flood “A- Team”! I would like to thank the team for an outstanding effort during the recent ICC Committee Action Hearings.
We testified in support of our many proposals to update the applicable I-Codes to align with the new ASCE/SEI 24-24 and ASCE/SEI 7-22 Supplement 2, representing the first significant update in more than 50 years.
These standards meaningfully advance flood design criteria for structures subject to flood loads. Without getting into the technical details of the provisions or the code, I wanted to shed light on the adoption process. Many are surprised and interested to learn that revisions and updates to design standards—whether loading or materials consensus documents—are not automatic.
To the contrary, a dedicated group of design professionals, regulators, and code consultants painstakingly work to develop proposals and attend the excruciating hearings to defend those proposals and make changes to the codes that are then locally adopted and become the legal requirements. It is difficult to explain the chaotic atmosphere and how two minutes of testimony is delivered successfully, but this A-Team planned, practiced, collaborated, and executed! I received many compliments on our team’s preparedness and in the end, we were mostly successful during this first round.
There are a few more steps in the process; I have high confidence we will be very successful in the end and that the 2027 I-Codes will be reflective of the good work done by the many talented and dedicated members of SEI. The flood team is not the only A-Team at SEI, and I am proud and humbled to work with you every day to advance and serve the structural engineering profession, and most importantly, to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Thank you to all of the A-Teams who work hard for SEI every day!
Jennifer Goupil, P.E., F.SEI, F.ASCE
Managing Director of the Structural Engineering Institute
ASCE Chief Resilience Officer