After more than a year of discussions and research led by a 14-person Code Development Review Ad-Hoc Committee (CDRAC) made up of International Code Council Board members and a broad cross section of industry representatives, along with hundreds of Member and stakeholder comments, recommendations have been developed aimed to increase participation and maintain the high level of confidence the code change process is recognized for. The Committee recommendations are built on the basic principles of the Council's Government Consensus Process.

The CDRAC recommended to the ICC Board that ICC staff present a work plan this year to put into practice changes to the Code Development Process that uses new and emerging technologies to increase member and stakeholder participation, consistent with the ICC mission. The work plan, according to the recommendation, will have new processes in place by the start of the code development cycle that will end with the publication of the 2018 International Codes.

"Everyone on the committee recognized that the process as it exists is a good process," said CDRAC Chair and ICC Board Member Cindy Davis, C.B.O, who is the Building and Zoning Official for Butler Township, Pennsylvania. "They made a good process a little bit better by making recommendations and perhaps taking the process in a new direction to keep up with technology and the way the world is changing. The Committee fully recognized that with today's economic realities the ability for code officials to participate in the process to represent their jurisdictions like they did in the past just isn't there today. We recognized there is a need to try to increase their ability to participate."

ICC Board President Jimmy Brothers, a former code official who serves on the Alabama Residential and Energy Codes Board, thanked the committee for a job well done. "This is an incremental process,” Brothers said. “Don't be disappointed with incremental change. Don't have expectations for dramatic change, but understand we are in pursuit of something better and more relevant than what we have right now."

The Committee's work was supported by several pieces of research, including a survey of code officials, inspectors, fire officials, architects, engineers, contractors and other industry professionals. Key findings showed:

• A solid majority support remote participation and embrace the notion of evolving the Code Development Process.
• Cost, lack of employer support and time out of the office are the primary barriers to participation.
• Other associations cite considerable benefits in moving to a technology‐enabled process.
• A wide range of considerations must be addressed to evolve toward remote participation and Internet voting.

In addition to the recommendation to use technology, the Committee formulated dozens of suggestions that address topics ranging from the length of hearings to the number of hearing tracks, conflicts of interest and Council Policy 36 that in part deals with financial assistance to participate in the code development hearings. For a complete summary of the committee's recommendations and reports, click here.

"Everyone on the committee really got a good sense of what the members were looking for and where there could be some improvements," Brothers said. "The input we got and the number of comments we got clearly gave us direction on the work this committee needed to."