The more prescriptive I-Codes are considered by many to be the “gold standard” – why change what is working?

First, we have seen an increased demand for more performance-based approaches in recent years. In addition, over the past few decades, as many other countries have moved to functional, objective or performance-based codes, there has been evolution in the focus on factors such as ‘quantification of performance’ which make the performance-based codes more robust and user-friendly. The Code Council has an opportunity to draw best practices and lessons learned from other countries that have been using performance-based codes. Furthermore, offering a performance code as the primary code does not preclude jurisdictions from using the full suite of I-Codes as compliance pathways to the performance criteria. In fact, this is what the Code Council would encourage jurisdictions to do. For those jurisdictions around the world that do not use the IBC and other I-Codes, particularly in lower and middle income countries, the ICCPC will provide a framework around which a building safety infrastructure can be created, with flexibility to reference metric standards or compliance pathways specific to the building materials and methods most commonly available and used in their markets.