Summary of April 28, 2021 Member Meeting

Alliance for Regulatory Coordination

Summary of Member Meeting

Meeting Date: April 28, 2021

Location: Teleconference

The meeting was convened at 9:01 a.m. by Bob DuPont, of Regulatory Guidance and Design, LLC.

Regarding May as Building Safety Month (BSM), DuPont reminded that he again plans on issuing a press release during each week of the month, beginning with one announcing that Governor Evers has issued a proclamation declaring May as Building Safety Month in Wisconsin. DuPont also reminded about the request from DSPS to let the Secretary know of any BSM events she might be able to attend.

Regarding Assembly Bill 152 and Senate Bill 167, concerning DSPS plan review triggers, DuPont reported that he has been in communication with Representative Brostoff concerning impacts of the proposal. He said the DSPS fiscal estimate reflects the fact that the DSPS performs plan review for most rural communities in Wisconsin, where many buildings are of the size proposed to become exempt from state level plan review under these bills.

Jeff Beiriger noted that the content of these bills could end up in the state budget proposal coming out of the Joint Finance Committee. He suggested that the ARC consider being proactive by requesting that Governor Evers veto these statute changes, whether they be passed as currently proposed, or within the budget bill passed by the legislature. DuPont said he would put that question to ARC members.

Regarding commercial building code development, DuPont reminded that, on behalf of the ARC, he submitted three requests to the DSPS relating to the commercial building code. The requests relate to: development of a Statement of Scope on plan review participation fees; rules on administration of the commercial building code; and consideration by the Commercial Building Code Council, of the ARC proposal to improve state statute language concerning carbon monoxide detection and smoke detectors (alarms).

Richard Paur reported that the Commercial Building Code Council has been receiving information relative to proposed code changes less than a week before they are set to discuss the matters at the next council meeting; and as chair of the council, he gets meeting information at the same time as the rest of the council. Concerns were raised about the lack of information from the DSPS relative to the order of code chapters and topics set to be discussed at upcoming meetings of the Commercial Building Code Council and the Plumbing Code Advisory Committee.

DuPont reminded that the DSPS had said they were waiting for the Code and Commentary documents from the International Code Council before going into detailed discussions concerning most of the Commercial Building Code. He said he believes DSPS leadership is committed to updating the codes as soon as possible, but in his view, a lack of available staff resources is negatively affecting progress.

Regarding uniform dwelling code development, DuPont reported that, on behalf of the International Code Council, Tim Schmitz presented information, about the International Residential Code (IRC), to the Uniform Dwelling Code Council on April 27th. DuPont also reported that he presented an overview of the ARC recommendation that Wisconsin should adopt the IRC as the basis of the Wisconsin Uniform Dwelling Code. DuPont said most builders on the council seemed uncomfortable with utilizing the IRC as the basis of the UDC, due to perceived increases in the cost to build to the IRC.

Scott Satula said he believes that conducting a side-by-side comparison of the IRC and UDC would be very helpful for both the DSPS and the council to better understand the similarities among the two codes, as well as the additional technical guidance provided by the IRC as compared to the UDC. He reminded that there are many areas of the UDC that need updating – all identified by the council several years ago already. And for most of those topics the council has been looking at the IRC for guidance.

Jeff Beiriger said his organization would like to see the UDC better coordinated with the Wisconsin Plumbing Code; suggesting that a new UDC project scope statement is needed as soon as possible.

Regarding DSPS code development communications and procedures, DuPont said he has not received a response to his request sent to DSPS relative to providing the order of topics to be considered by code councils and confirmation of DSPS receipt of meeting topic requests from the public.

The next meeting of Alliance Members was set for August 3, 2021, as a teleconference and perhaps with a venue for meeting in person. Ed Ruckriegel offered use of Madison Fire Department Station 14 as the possible venue location.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:20 a.m.

This summary was prepared by Bob DuPont, Regulatory Guidance and Design, LLC.

It was issued on June 1, 2021.