IAS News

Coordinating Programs with Government Agencies

By Richard L. F. Archer, Sr., Accreditation Specialist, IAS Building Department Accreditation Program

The vision of the International Accreditation Service (IAS) is to promote safety and the protection of property through the accreditation of organizations that test, inspect, certify and regulate the products that people use in their daily lives. We collectively work toward that end as do many federal, state and local government agencies. Often our work follows a parallel track where our efforts overlap. In the interest of providing the best possible service, IAS endeavors to work in concert with government agencies through cooperative ventures.

A case in point is the current efforts between the IAS Building Department Accreditation (BDA) Program and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The National Flood Plain Insurance Program’s Community Rating Service (NFIP CRS) through FEMA provides cities, towns and counties nationwide with the opportunity to create a proactive program to remedy the devastating effects of flooding. The CRS is a means of assessing the extent of what jurisdictions are doing regarding flood mitigation. The extent of what a jurisdiction does then translates into a score that is rated for a flood insurance premium discount.

IAS staff met with FEMA representatives in September 2007 at the International Code Council's Annual Conference in Reno, Nevada, to discuss similarities in the key elements required by the CRS and the IAS BDA programs. It was agreed that both sides would take a closer look at each others program to see if it was possible to work out a partnership.

Subsequent to the initial meeting in Reno, information was exchanged between our organizations in a flurry of emails and telephone calls. Eventually, FEMA sent a representative to observe a BDA pre-evaluation visit that IAS conducted with a jurisdiction in the state of Virginia. This was a perfect opportunity for FEMA to see how IAS applied its Accreditation Criteria for Building Departments (AC251) in practice. After the pre-evaluation concluded each day, FEMA and IAS staff met afterward to discuss the day’s events, which provided the opportunity for extensive dialogue regarding the similarities and differences between the FEMA and IAS programs.

Continuing our efforts in July 2008, IAS received an invitation to attend a week-long seminar on the CRS program. Like FEMA’s observation of the BDA pre-evaluation, the seminar provided an in-depth explanation of the FEMA program and required criteria. Gaining this knowledge of their program provided a better understanding of how the IAS BDA program could be linked to the CRS, and what cooperative efforts could be developed. Each evening meeting with the FEMA representative gave IAS staff a forum to hone the fine details and develop a framework that could then be submitted to the FEMA Task Force for approval.

At this point, the specifics and logistics are being worked out. The process has taken almost a year, but the effort that was put into making this partnership work has been mutually worthwhile. There are a variety of benefits that can result from these cooperative efforts, including: a) participating jurisdictions can provide better mitigation of flood hazards; b) homeowners in these jurisdictions may realize discounts in their flood insurance premiums, resulting in substantial savings for the community-at-large; c) FEMA is better able to serve jurisdictions by using IAS resources; and d) the IAS BDA program gains further credibility among jurisdictions.

The IAS BDA/FEMA CRS scenario is only one example of how two programs can work together in the enhancement of services to local communities. The Code Council and IAS will continue to be proactive in creating synergistic partnerships with other entities working toward similar purposes.

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