Industry News

A Chief’s Perspective
Codes and Standards

In our work world, we frequently hear the terms “codes” and “standards”. Unfortunately, sometimes these words are wrongly used interchangeably; thus, I thought it might be beneficial to review the role each of them plays.

Codes (building, fire, mechanical, etc.) are documents developed through a model code group’s consensus procedure. The codes specify minimum requirements on building construction, and when protection systems and equipment must be provided. Some examples are sprinklers, standpipes, and portable fire extinguishers.

Standards are documents that specify how the code-required equipment and system are to be installed. The two major groups who write standards are the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the Underwriters Laboratory (UL). There are also several smaller groups who write product-specific standards.

Codes are referred to by the name of the model code group, the type of code and the year of the edition. A standard is referred to by the group who wrote it, plus a specific standard number, a title and the edition’s year.

States and local governments choose which model code they wish to adopt for use as minimum requirements. They generally adopt NFPA, UL and others as references.
There are currently four (soon to be five) model code groups in the United States. Three of these are discontinuing the publication of their codes, so eventually there will only be two code groups. However, some jurisdictions continue to use older model code groups’ editions for years, which can cause confusion.

There is a great deal of general information business owners and their employees should be aware of regarding codes and standards, which I will explain.

I would like to focus on the importance of the codes in relationship to your business.
Since you are a professional in your field of sales, installation and servicing fire protection equipment, it’s important for you to know which of the model codes are used in your jurisdiction. This knowledge can be invaluable in assisting your customers on complying with the code requirements. If you don’t know your local codes, you can contact your local Fire Marshal.

Currently, there are two model code groups developing a full set of construction codes: (1) The international Code Council (ICC) and (2) the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

This isn’t as simple as it sounds because the ICC is the result of the three original model code groups merging as of January 2003, and some jurisdictions (states, counties, cities) may legally continue to use the former code publications for several years.

Your local code official may still rightfully refer for an indeterminate time to one of the following: the National Codes developed by the Building Officials and Code Administrators International, Inc. (BOCA); the Uniform Codes developed by the International Conference of Building Officials (ICBO); and the Standard developed by the Southern Building Congress International, Inc. (SBCCI).

You may be familiar with NFPA, inasmuch as they have developed Standards for years, but they’ve recently entered the code arena by developing a full set of construction codes.
Their new codes were not printed until 2003, so are just now available to be adopted. I don’t believe they will be used as widely as the entrenched ICC codes.