ICC-ES eNews

John Nosse Honored for 44 Years of Service


John Nosse (second from left) and wife May with Code Council CEO Rick Weiland (left) and Board President Ron Lynn at the retirement dinner at the Friendly Hills Country Club, in Whittier, California.

John Nosse, one of the great veterans of the model code organizations and the American building industry, officially retired as president of ICC Evaluation Service (ICC-ES) on January 27. Nosse had spent 44 years on the job, starting as a plan-check engineer with the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO) in 1965. Later, he was the first and only president of ICBO Evaluation Service, and in 2003 he became the first president of ICC-ES. Nosse's retirement came after serving for several months as President Emeritus of ES during Mark Johnson's transition as the new ES President.

John Nosse is a great gentleman with a fine sense of humor, and he is warmly regarded by most of those who have worked for him and with him. He is also highly respected throughout the building industry, and especially by the membership of the International Code Council (ICC). In his final weeks on the job, Nosse was honored by the ICC and ICC-ES staff with a party and luncheon, and on the evening of January 27 about 90 colleagues and friends gathered in Whittier, California, to wish him good-bye. The Whittier event featured dinner, speeches, staff reminiscences, and a whole lot of laughter and tears. Nosse was a leader who always liked a good laugh, and one whose departure was bound to inspire some sadness.

When John Nosse came to ICBO, which then produced the codes used in the western United States, the organization was based in Pasadena, California, and had just 18 employees. Nosse began on the engineering staff, and took responsibility for the “Research Department” (which produced reports on innovative building products) in 1972. Fourteen years later, when ICBO Evaluation Service was formed, Nosse was named president. He retained that position until ICC-ES came into being, replacing the evaluation services of the older model code organizations, in 2003.


	John Nosse displays the anthology of his ICBO-ICC career that was presented to him in recognition of his many years of dedicated service.

Throughout his career, Nosse was energetic, devoted to engineering excellence, and active not only nationally but internationally. He insisted, always, on the highest technical and ethical standards for his staff. He traveled often to Asia and the Pacific, to Latin America and Europe, to meet with industry and government representatives from many countries and to push for improved building standards and increased international trade in building products. Nosse was especially well-known in Japan, where he was honored by the government for fostering the exchange of information on building construction.

As the first president of ICC-ES, Nosse skillfully managed the difficult transition period during which four separate building-product evaluation services, headquartered at four different locations across the country, were merged into one. The transition began in 2003 and was essentially complete within 18 months, when the new organization was accredited as a product certifier by the American National Standards Institute. The remarkably smooth transition was owed much to John Nosse’s vision, follow-through and management skills.

Nosse put ICC-ES firmly on the path that it is following now: towards improved customer service, increased cooperation with other standards bodies and product certifiers, and unmatched technical expertise. Nosse has always emphasized the engineering side of ICC-ES’s business; now, with competition growing among product evaluators, he has also seen the need to reach out, develop cooperative arrangements between ICC-ES and other organizations doing similar work, and provide outstanding service to everyone who comes to ICC-ES for a product evaluation.

Mark Johnson has succeeded John Nosse as ICC-ES president, but he is humble in taking up Nosse’s duties. “Working with John Nosse,” said Johnson on the occasion of Nosse’s retirement, “has been like being a teammate of Babe Ruth.” A baseball fan for most of his life, Nosse expressed appreciation for the analogy. But, ever mindful of the welfare of the organization he helped create, John was hoping at the same time that Mark Johnson would become, in his own right, an outstandingly successful team leader.

Hawaiian-born and a frequent traveler to the islands, John Nosse is also a golfer, occasional gardener and dedicated tennis player. He has been married to his delightful wife, May, for 51 years, and together the two of them have raised three daughters, Stacy, Kellie, and Wendy. John is also a proud grandpa, twice over.

We are happy to report that John Nosse will not be leaving ICC and ICC-ES entirely, but will be returning now and again to ICC-ES to offer advice and counsel to the organization’s management. He will also serve on the ICC-ES Board of Directors. Everyone in the ICC family, and certainly his many friends and associates around the world and throughout the American building industry, wish John Nosse the very best in his well-deserved retirement.