- Author
-
Thompson, G. N.
- Title
- Preparation and Revision of Building Codes. [Superseding BMS 19].
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC
- Report
-
BMS 116
September 1, 1949
19 p.
- Keywords
-
building codes
|
building construction
- Abstract
- Building construction has been subjected for many years to legal control in the interest of safety and health. While there is general agreement on the need for this, specific applications in the form of building codes have been frequently criticized on the grounds of imposing excessive expense and of failing to make adjustments to changing conditions. The responsibility for preparing or revising building codes usually falls upon local committees. These are called upon to do a great deal of tedious and exacting work. One of their first problems is to determine what source material is available and how they should proceed. In this discussion, a description is given of how such work is done and useful sources of technical information are indicated. Some of the problems that are encountered by local committees are mentioned, including what basic principles are involved; methods of presentation, arrangement, and numbering; advantages of using national standards and ways of referring to them; methods of recognizing new materials and new methods of construction; extent of delegation of authority to the building official and safeguards against arbitrary action; and other questions of major importance. An attempt has been made to place committees in possession of sufficient information to proceed in their work with a minimum of lost motion. Not all questions can be answered with finality, since the situation is complicated by the existence of proposals of nearly equal merit and by differing judicial decisions. Such differences will no doubt continue to exist for some time; but they are not of sufficient importance to be allowed to obscure the main objective of providing adequate protection without creating too much of a drag on the building industry. Constructive work in the field of building-code requirements has been going on continuously for some time and will exert an ever-increasing influence. This discussion is offered to supplement such work and as a contribution to the orderly development of good requirements.