5 Steps to Advocate for Building Safety in Your Community

We all play a significant role in ensuring our homes and communities are constructed and maintained to modern building safety standards.

Week 2 of the International Code Council’s Building Safety Month teaches individuals how to create a game plan to actively support building safety programs in their communities. By spreading the importance of adopting modern building codes and standards, individuals can contribute to preventing disasters such as structural collapse or fires and help mitigate the potential damage caused by events such as hurricanes or floods.

To make a difference within your community, we outlined five steps you can take to help make sure the places where we live, work, play and learn are safe.

Step One:

Identify the adopted building safety codes where you live. 

Visit the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH) website and enter your zip code into their Strong Home Scale to find the model code status of your home based on available data. Here you’ll also learn about the potential threats to your home based on community disaster history, and what upgrades may increase your home’s resilience.

Step Two:

Visit the Code Council’s code adoption map and Codes Save to determine if your state or community has adopted up-to-date codes for new construction. If improvements are needed, determine if the codes in your state are adopted at the state or local level.

Step Three:

Ask public officials to advocate for change. This might be a building official, a city council person or county commissioner, or a state building code board or legislator.

After you find your state’s information on the Code Council’s code adoption map, click on the blue button “State Information and Resources” to learn more.

Step Four: 

Get ready to take action.

If building codes are considered by your city council or county commission, consider attending a meeting. Depending on the meeting, you can speak during an open comment time or when an item is considered on the agenda. Call the clerk’s office to find out the meeting date, location and rules for participating.

If building codes are considered by a state board, many of the meetings are available to view online. There is also typically a way to provide public comment in writing or at a specific time in a regularly scheduled meeting.

If building codes are considered by your state legislature, contact your legislators, either by phone, email or an in-person visit to an office.

Step Five:

Ask for change. Here are a few talking points on why adopting and enforcing modern building codes is important:

• Adopting and implementing modern building codes, like the International Codes® (I-Codes), protects homes and families from extreme weather and other hazards and reduces the cost of living by curbing utility bills, insurance premiums, and repairs and maintenance all without impacting housing affordability. 
• Widespread adoption of modern building codes at the state and local levels can lower construction costs, increase efficiencies for builders and manufacturers and encourage economic investment through minimized risk and reduced borrowing costs for communities. 
• Updated codes save time and resources after a disaster. The National Institute of Building Sciences found that the adoption of the most current edition of the International Codes® (I-Codes) generates a national benefit of $11 for every $1 invested in mitigation and recovery costs. 
• As technology around the building trades evolves and becomes more advanced, so do the I-Codes. Every three years, the Code Council begins a new code cycle to ensure that the I-Codes reflect the latest innovations in building science. 

By advocating for the adoption and implementation of modern codes and standards, you help to create a safer, more resilient community for everyone. 

To access more resources and tools, visit here.