GR's Tom Allen a resource of information for ICC Members.

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If you talk to Tom Allen, one thing becomes clear: not only does he know his history he lives it — in more ways than one. Allen comes from a long history of construction professionals, being a fourth generation carpenter and a third generation contractor, and when he wasn't making new things, he was re-creating old ones as a historical re-enactor of the Seminole War — not the Civil War, as he's quick to point out, as it can cause some confusion in his home state of Florida. "People see the blue wool uniform and think I'm a Union soldier, but that's what they all wore back in the 1830s," Allen explains. He is also a big proponent of learning from history, as well. "I worked in Miami after Hurricane Andrew and I could see, after all the damage it had caused, that codes were about to be a really big deal in Florida," Allen recalls. That experience, as well as encouragement from his friends who were building officials inspired him to get his inspector's license and start working for the local government. While working in the state of Florida, he became more and more interested in the code development process, getting involved at both the state and national levels, attending hearings, promoting code changes, and then taking what he learned and bringing that knowledge back to his peers. "That was the part of the job I liked the most," Allen says. "Learning everything I could about what changes were happening around the country and helping others understand it." That spirit of helping others helped carry him into his current position in the Government Relations division at ICC. He cites encouragement from mentors like Phil McMahan (his predecessor at ICC) getting him more involved in national activities, like being on the Building Official Membership Council, which in turn gave him insight into what ICC staff does. Now, as GR staff, he can devote his whole time to being a resource of information for ICC Members about what's happening both with the model codes nationally, and the state codes in Florida and Georgia. But he doesn't stop with the ICC Membership, either. For the longest time, GR staff learned their jobs on the fly, finding out the ins and outs of the organization and the department just by working through them. But Allen, as the self-described "most senior new guy" in the department, has spent a lot of his spare time with review and update of a "New GR Manager" manual, using his experience on both the Member side and the staff side to highlight the small stuff that most people only learn over a series of happy accidents. So if you're ever down in Florida and you see a bearded guy in a blue uniform marching down the streets of St. Augustine in the Veterans' Day parade, it's not a lost Yankee. It might just be a man with a keen eye and deep respect for history.