Code Construction

Despite Long Delays, Finish Line in Sight for New Building Code

by Tom Stabile

The byzantine New York City building code has been ripe for reform for decades, so industry leaders cheered in late 2002 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched plans for the city to adopt and adapt the International Building Code, a modern, nationally recognized standard.

The road has been long and winding, including a Chrysler Building-sized bump in 2004 when a rival code briefly gained favor in the City Council.

The effort reached a major milestone last November, when Bloomberg signed a bill authorizing the shift to the IBC. But the act established a deadline of July 1, 2007, for the City Council to adopt the new code provisions. Missing the deadline could require much of the code review process to begin anew, said Phyllis Arnold, deputy commissioner for legal affairs and chief code counsel for the New York City Department of Buildings.

"This is our best shot at revising it in our generation," she added.

A New Strategy on the Final Stretch

The prospect of starting over provides plenty of motivation, and Arnold said the buildings department is on pace to deliver the new code language for the council's review by year's end or early in 2007.

The result will differ from the buildings department's original strategy, which called for an initial bill to endorse the IBC, a second to approve existing code language needing only minor revision, and a final bill to ratify major changes.

But in late 2004, labor groups and others built considerable support on the council for a rival code developed by the National Fire Protection Association. The issue was resolved months later after negotiations between the city and labor leaders, particularly from Plumbers and Gasfitters Local Union No. 1 in Queens, who withdrew support for NFPA's code.

While the IBC prevailed, the buildings department and its council allies decided to scrap the three-bill strategy and shift instead to two bills that contained completed code chapters for adoption, 35 in all.

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In that vein, November's authorizing bill also contained language for the code's administrative chapter and related but separate plumbing, mechanical, and gas codes. That leaves the heavy lifting - language for chapters 2 through 35 of the main building code - for the second bill, which the council must adopt by July 1.

The language for each chapter has traveled through the department's Model Code Program - an assemblage of 400 industry leaders serving on 13 committees that studied, discussed, and sought consensus on every line of code across hundreds of pages. Most of that work finished before this year, leaving unresolved matters for final haggling before a few of the panels this year, said Fatma Amer, the department's deputy commissioner for technical affairs and chief code engineer.

The committees are hashing out disputed items - about 10 percent of the code - in sessions overseen by buildings department mediators, she said. If the panels cannot reach consensus by summer's end, the code program's management oversight committee will try to resolve each issue or send it to Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster for a final decision on what heads to the council.

One mediation issue was a debate over the number of exits in low-rise residential buildings, with fire protection advocates pressing for multiple points of egress.

"We have to find common ground between what is safe and what is cost sensible," Amer said.

The other 90 percent is already going through a line-by-line technical review by department architects and engineers. It is also going through a cost-impact assessment that runs prototypes of high-rise commercial, high-rise residential, school, and low-rise affordable housing buildings through both the existing and proposed codes to ensure that any changes are cost-neutral or cheaper, Amer said.

Once cleared through those steps, completed chapters are moving to the city's law department for a legal look-over, and later to the building department's legislative team for packaging into bill language.

Most outstanding issues should be resolved before the council sees the bill, said Leroy Comrie Jr., a councilmember on the Housing and Buildings Committee that will review the code. He said he prefers to see it sooner rather than later.

"I want to make sure we have the right of last refusal or alteration," he added. "There are always special circumstances that require independent review of the code. I would want anybody who had problems to bring them to the council for a fair hearing. Bottom line is we want a code compatible with the rest of the country and a smooth path toward creating construction opportunities in the city, not the maze of confusion we have now."

Comrie said he hopes the council will get an update on the bill's status soon.

"Back when Councilmember [Madeline] Provenzano was chair, we had quarterly meetings with the Department of Buildings," he added. "We haven't had one since she left office last year."

Arnold said the department plans to reconnect with the council this year.

The agency is already preparing for the new code. Arnold said efforts are afoot to train inspectors and other staff in the new code's language and format, as well as to update forms, technology, and software.

It is also developing training materials for the industry, which if the code were adopted on July 1 would have a one-year grace period during which a building could be planned with either the new or old code - or in some cases a hybrid.

But that all assumes the code will be ratified by July 1. Comrie said it's doable.

"I think the council is going to want to have at least two committee hearings on it, unless there is total Kumbaya and everyone is happy with it," he said.