Without giving up too many secrets, I was practicing when the profession evolved from three regional codes to a singular, national, comprehensive series of model building codes. The International Code Council (ICC) published the first editions of the I-Codes in 2000, including the International Building Code (IBC) and the International Residential Code (IRC). At the time, this was a radical change in regulatory process. However, since then, the ICC development cycles systematically update the codes with advancements developed in referenced standards, such as ASCE 7 and ASCE 24. In fact, the most significant advancement in flood design and construction in 50 years has been incorporated into the 2027 editions of the IBC and IRC through improvements to ASCE 7-22 Supplement 2 and ASCE 24-24, which are now incorporated by reference. ASCE committee members explain all the details in a series of upcoming SEI webinars on Sept. 2, 9, and 23; learn more below.
What is the next big change for design documents? How will our development, adoption, and use of regulatory documents evolve? How will we use codes and standards in the future? While I still do not have that crystal ball, we do have a series of five reports developed by SEI and NIST that answer many questions about Forward Looking Codes and Standards. The suite of reports examines how future hazards and changing conditions may influence the design, performance, and resilience of buildings and infrastructure and also opines on what those future documents may look like. Start with the final report for a comprehensive summary of the findings.
As ASCE standards develop and evolve technical provisions, such as flood design and the newly published ASCE/SEI Prestandard for Use of Computational Wind Engineering in Building Design, and as those standards are adopted into codes, the regulatory framework serves the public well and advances and protects the health, safety and welfare for all.