 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Carol Werner, and I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Welcome to our briefing this afternoon on what can Congress do to build better buildings. For those of you who may not know, EESI is a nonprofit organization that was formed back in the mid-1980s by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, a bipartisan Congressional Caucus, in fact, that was very concerned about finding additional resources to try and better inform the Congressional debate over issues of science technology and policy to make sure that there was timely factual information that was getting to policy makers since they were always strapped for resources. So that has been our mission for these 35 years, and we continue to do that. This briefing is yet one more example of how we really try to assist policy makers and their staffs in highlighting issues that we think are really important for them to know more about to provide the voices of people who are specialists, who are experts on these topics and who really care about finding when, when, very workable policy solutions to problems that are facing us across the country. And so this afternoon, we are taking a look at this issue around buildings, and we are very pleased to have been working with ASHRAE, the International Code Council, as well as the International Association of Lighting Designers, because all of these things are extremely important as we think about our built environment. And one of the things that I think that we so often forget or need to remind ourselves about how much time we really spend indoors and that, therefore, that environment in this, in buildings, in the built environment, is critically important in terms of, yes, energy, something that at EESI we're very, very concerned about, very, and it also very much matters in terms of thinking about productivity, what this means for our ability to function well, to work well, to learn well, and it really does have an impact upon our health. So there are so many ways in which what happens inside buildings where we spend more than 90% of our time, it's really important that we try and get it right. And it also makes it very important for us to think about not only do we make it more pleasant, more conducive, or better health, better environment, better on the efficiency side, but so that we also have our buildings be as resilient as possible since we are dealing with enormous investments in our built environment. And certainly as we look at more and more extreme weather events that occur, it makes it very, very important that we make our buildings as resilient as possible in every sense of the word. So this afternoon, we are going to hear from three people who have been spending their, their careers looking at these really important issues around our built environment, around our buildings, and also helping us to think about what is the policy role? Does the federal government, does Congress have a role? What should that role be? And certainly we feel that it is really important to hear from people who are really studying, have been investigating these issues for years to bring all of that expertise to bear. So we are really, really privileged this afternoon to hear from this panel of speakers. We're going to start off hearing from William Fisk, who is, he also goes by Bill, who is a senior scientist and mechanical engineer, leading the indoor environment group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has done research in the whole area of indoor environment for almost 40 years, where he's focused on how indoor environmental conditions affect our health performance, and what are some of the methods how we can improve our indoor environments. He's a member of the Academy of Indoor Aerosciences, a fellow of ASHRAE, and he has also served on committees for the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science. Okay, thank you for the introduction, and good afternoon, everybody. So as Carol indicated, I'm a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, but I'm speaking to you today at the request of ASHRAE. So I'd start out with just a few words about ASHRAE. ASHRAE is the society of about 57,000 professionals, the people who design, build, install, and maintain heating, ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration systems, or buildings. These are the systems that keep us comfortable in our buildings. And ASHRAE plays a sort of a key educational role, and it's sort of a glue that keeps this community working together. It provides a forum where competitors in business can sit together, often with people like me at the table as well, and develop consensus standards, guidelines, and conference programs and position papers that reflect these consensus views and that improve the professional practice. And ASHRAE has many widely used standards. A couple of very widely used standards are Standard 62, which specifies minimum ventilation rates and procedures for maintaining acceptable indoor air quality in buildings, and Standard 90 for maintaining building energy efficiency. So ASHRAE asked me to speak about the influence of the indoor environment on health and productivity. So what I mean about the indoor environment? Well, the indoor environment are the environmental conditions in buildings, temperature, humidity, the concentrations of pollutants in the air and on surfaces, that the lighting conditions and the acoustic conditions, all those together interact and affect the quality of the indoor environment. Not unexpectedly, the outdoor environment has a strong influence on the indoor environment, the outdoor temperature and humidity and air pollutant levels. But because we spend, as Carol said, 90% of our time indoors, for many outdoor air pollutants, most of our exposure occurs not when we're outdoors, but when we're indoors. And the features of our buildings can have a pretty profound impact on how much we're sheltered from those outdoor pollutants. So the features of our buildings affect, strongly in some cases, the risks from outdoor air pollution. But that's not the whole story. There are many sources of pollutants in buildings, building materials and furnishings, some consumer products, booking, tobacco smoking, tests of various types, pets, dampness and mold, those are sources of indoor pollutants in buildings. And because we have these indoor sources, or many pollutants, the levels of the concentrations of those pollutants indoors are exceed the concentrations outdoors. So is this important? Well, research from around the world, including in my group, have shown that the indoor environment does affect people's health and productivity. I'll go through some examples. As of 2014, about a quarter of the American population and 14 million children were still exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. And that tobacco smoke is linked to a host of outcomes, ear and respiratory infections, increased asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, among other health effects. The concentrations of radioactive radine gas are often many times higher, almost always many times higher indoors and outdoors. And radon is projected to cause about 15,000 to 22,000 lung cancer cases per year in the United States. So that's second only to tobacco smoking, direct tobacco smoking as a source of lung cancer. Indoors, we have allergens and chemicals from indoor sources that contribute to allergy and asthma symptoms. And in the US, about 8.3% of the population, that's 27 million people, have currently active asthma. Pretty big number and a larger number are allergic. And many of them respond to these pollutants, which were exposed indoors, many of which come from indoor sources. More examples, dampness and mold are common in our buildings. And where we have dampness and mold in other buildings, we have increases in respiratory adverse respiratory health effects like cough, wheeze and increased asthma. It has been estimated that about 21% of current active asthma in the United States is due to dampness and mold just in our homes. In 2004, that was estimated to have health costs about $3.4 billion. It will be more today. We also have dozens of organic chemicals indoors that come from all the products that we use in buildings and use to build our buildings. Some of these are irritants, some increase the risk of cancer. Some of them are suspected to increase asthma or the symptoms of asthma. Many may be harmless, but for most of them, we really don't know. So we introduce these chemicals in our buildings and we don't really know what risks they pose. So it's not just health, though, that's affected by the indoor environment. It's our performance. And the research has shown that our performance of office work and school work improves when we provide better indoor environmental quality. For example, when we maintain more comfortable temperatures indoors or when we provide more outdoor air. And here, I'd say schools really need particular attention. The data, although limited, suggests that on average in elementary schools in the United States, those schools provide about half of the amount of outdoor air ventilation that's specified as the minimum requirement in codes. Many schools even fall far short of half. And lower ventilation rate in schools are associated with increased student absence and decreased student performance and including decreased performance on a standard academic achievement test, as we use to assess how well our students are doing. So our students in poorly ventilated schools are at a disadvantage. A building energy efficiency critically important is linked to indoor environmental quality. Available evidence indicates that in general, when we have an energy efficient building, we make it more comfortable at the same time, formally comfortable. However, in research, energy efficiencies, relationship to indoor air pollutant levels and health outcomes has varied. Sometimes it's been positive, and sometimes it's been negative. That really depends on how we implement that energy efficiency as to how it affects our exposures to pollutants and health. I really think that if we do this right, if we pay proper attention to limiting sources of pollutants in buildings and sharing adequate ventilation, energy efficiency, it could be a net gain. It can improve our indoor environment, our comfort, our health all at the same time. So I think there's a real opportunity there. I think more broadly that think of the indoor environmental situation we have today as an opportunity, an opportunity to improve health and performance, and it's an opportunity for big financial benefits associated with health and performance improvements. For example, one of our analyses projects annual economic benefits, about $20 billion per year, just from increasing ventilation rates and reducing high temperatures and reducing dampness and mold in the U.S. office building stock. Another opportunity indicates the opportunity to reduce premature mortality by doing a better job of particle filtration in our homes with annual health related economic benefits to the occupants of 100 to sometimes more than a thousand, a few hundred to more than a thousand dollars per person. And with those health related economic benefits, eating costs often by a factor of 10. You can see even more extreme opportunity examples. In office buildings, better particle filtration looks even more cost effective or the health related economic benefits of better filtration are projected to exceed costs by a factor of 70 to 120. In schools, we have an opportunity to ventilate better, make them more comfortable and improve, reduce the absence and improve the performance of our students. Well, there's certainly a lot of uncertainty with the precise numbers associated with those economic benefits. But I think there's no doubt that there's a really large opportunity nationwide to improve our health and our performance and to gain financially if we do a better job within our environments in our buildings. So I want to close with a few comments about the federal connection. All federal agencies have workers in buildings. Consequently, all should have an interest in maintaining good indoor environmental quality in those buildings to assure worker comfort and health and productivity. But many federal agencies actually have other mission related reasons to be concerned about the indoor environment. And I'll give you not all the examples, but a few. The Department of Energy, the EPA, NIOSH, NIH, for example, have related research programs, albeit often quite modest ones. Department of Energy promotes building energy efficiency. And as I indicated, that can influence indoor environmental quality positively or negatively. EPA has an environmental protection mission. And EPA has programs to educate stakeholders about indoor environmental quality. And it helps develop protocols for stakeholders such as schools so that they can cost effectively and effectively manage indoor environmental quality in schools. It has responsibilities for housing, including subsidized housing. Department of Education seeks to maximize the effectiveness of our education system. And to do that, we need to maintain good indoor environmental conditions at our buildings. The general services administration is responsible for federally owned and leased building spaces. FEMA, for example, supplies temporary housing for people after disasters. So all these agencies have a reason to be interested in the indoor environment. And I think with sufficient resources and attention to indoor environmental quality, each of these agencies can help us maintain comfortable, healthy, and productive productivity-enhancing conditions in the U.S. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And once again, it was kind of a very good illustration of how so many different places, so many different agencies all play a role. So it's not just one agency, one person's responsibility, but as we look at how the built environment helped buildings affect us in so many different ways that everybody needs to kind of play their part in terms of everybody has a piece in terms of jurisdiction, in terms of thinking about committees, I guess I would say on the Hill, as well as then the agencies that they oversee. So to take an additional look at buildings and what this means, our second speaker is going to talk about the whole role of lighting. And so we will hear from Randy Burkett, who is the president and design principal of Randy Burkett Lighting Design, Inc. And he is also an active member of the International Association of Lighting Designers and is a former past president of that organization. Of course, they are one of the sponsoring organizations today. As principal of his firm, he establishes design direction and oversees the management of the firm's projects. And he has involved in several technical committees, technical and design committees including quality of the visual environment, lighting for outdoor public spaces, as well as the color metric task group. Now I don't know what some of those things are, but I am eager to, but I am always eager to learn. So Randy has designed for a whole variety of different kinds of projects. Very, very diverse collection of environments, including everything from convention centers to healthcare facilities and laboratories, to museums, to retail malls and stores, to corporate offices, to signature bridges. And of course, I always love signature bridges that are so beautiful when you see them. And as well as building exteriors and site developments. So we are eager to hear from Randy. Thank you, Carol. Who wrote that? It's good to be on this panel with colleagues who care just as passionately as I do about the subject of the build environment. I do want to thank the International Association of Lighting Designers for inviting me to speak as a lighting design professional here to you all. And as you might surmise, I'm going to talk about lighting. I'll try not to get into the real nerdy stuff that Carol referenced, but I want to be very specific, though, about what we're really talking about today that's important. Often we take lighting for granted. Maybe I don't, but I'd say most people do. And frankly, they should, because that's not normally the nature and the focus of their lives. Lighting reinforces our lives and what it is we do, whether it's performing a task, those of you who might be reading your notes right now or perhaps seeing me. There's a technical task involved. You're trying to see my facial expressions. You're trying to take notes on a pad. You need light to accomplish that, at least effectively. And that's probably where it ends for a lot of people. Do I have enough light to see? And that is very, very important. But it goes far further or far deeper than that. The slide that you see up on the screen right now is one that seeks to sort of pick apart the nature of what good lighting is. And I'm going to use a term that we use a lot as design professionals, lighting quality. By that we mean that it's more than just the numbers, more than how much light. It's also what kind of light are we, how do we design with the light and what kind of lighting environment are we creating? You can see on the screen a Venn diagrams that sort of have at their center the term lighting quality. I wish lighting quality was a recipe. I wish I could say I need three-foot candles here on this podium and I have good lighting quality. It's far more involved and perhaps sometimes more complex than that. I think oftentimes I've heard one of my colleagues say I know good lighting only when I really see it and that's probably true and maybe you don't know when you're seeing it and that's okay too. But you'll notice the types of words that you see in these diagrams, the kinds of things that we feel contribute to a quality lighting environment. One of the things that we've all I think in our lives experienced is being able or going somewhere where lighting actually is distracting. You say I can't see that or and what you're typically seeing is glare. It's hurting you in a sense that it is not allowing you to see a speaker in my case or a play at a theater or perhaps driving down the road at night. Why is it more difficult to see at night? There are a lot of visual things going on. As lighting professionals we try to control that the best we can. But let's suffice it to say from this slide that lighting quality is a real soup of metrics and decisions that are made about quality and the environment, architecture, location. All of that goes into a good lighting design and ultimately to a successful project and successful building. And these you saw from the previous slide the top half of the slide had a few bullet points about quality. And this one talking about satisfaction and productivity in the work environment. If you hate going to work, I hope it's not the lighting but it could be contributing to that. In fact there have been some studies in the past that have shown that lighting is connected specifically to productivity. Sometimes that can be seen in more controlled environments like factories and where widgets are being produced. But the same is true of almost any working environment. Productivity is affected by the lighted environment. And part of that is how much light. But a lot of it is what kind of light is designed for the space. We think we can use light, we know we can use light to elevate performance. Certainly if you were to sit in the moonlight in an open field and try to read war and peace, the eye is robust enough that it would allow you to begin to read war and peace. But my guess is after a few minutes you're going to say I need more light to read war and peace. You actually wanted to be more efficient at reading it. You want your eye to be able to see that. So that's important and that's a factual fact about visual performance. But it goes beyond that. We can create environments that increase importance in performance while maintaining a light level reasonable for your task. Enhancing mood is something that we feel we do a lot as lighting designers. We feel that the setting for a worker or for someone who is out for a nice restaurant or for a nice meal at a restaurant. Enhancing that through lighting makes and heightens the experience. Bill was talking about schools and we know that lighting and help keep alertness in students. There's a lot we don't know about it but we do know that lighting affects that. So when students come in first thing in the morning maybe they need to be their alertness needs to be enhanced. But part of the environment too is about literally about the desirability of space. I mentioned the restaurant. You certainly don't want to go to a restaurant with poor lighting and think that oh goodness this isn't what I expected. Oftentimes lighting dictates the feeling of the room. We feel well-being is somewhat hard to define. I looked it up on Wikipedia like everything else in life and well-being is defined as the state of being comfortable healthy and happy. Hopefully you're all that today but like all the other environmental aspects of the building lighting contributes to that. I'm going to give you an example in just a moment. Finally a psychological reinforcement. I went to university many years ago but I had a mentor there John Flynn who was a professor at Penn State and he instilled in me the basic tenets of the impact of light on quality through how it psychologically reinforces space. And sometimes that's negative reinforcement. You've ever been to a space where you just feel uncomfortable you don't know why. Lighting might have contributed to that. Or an uncomfortable space that I just fall asleep in here. Lighting may have played a role in that. We now know enough that we can think about this in design. And of course it goes for the outdoors. We're talking about the built environment today primarily but let's let us not forget that there's a lot of outdoor environment where people gather and socialize. In fact there's an urban renaissance in many of our American cities and in the rest of the world for that matter. I think it's important that we pay attention to that as well. And some of the same things apply. In this case in our urban environments to make it safe and secure you constantly hear the drum beat about how much light I need more light I need this. And that can and may be true. But we also need other things. How do you reinforce aspects of orientation and wayfinding. How do you make make people perceive a safe environment. If you're walking toward me in a park do I need to see your facial expressions to determine what whether or not I should take action. These are all things that we can now take into account as lighting professionals. And of course not only the parks and public areas themselves but the buildings around us. We've just finished a major master plan for the city of San Antonio. And we were able to demonstrate to the decision makers that in the visual environment your pathway occupies only about 10 or 12 percent of your visual field. To not care about that other 80 to 90 percent would be foolhardy. We have to to the degree we can help dictate how that lighting is perceived. Now for the past well since 2005 so for the past 14 maybe 15 years Department of Energy has had a program initiated by EPAC in 2005 to the Energy Policy Act to foster the development of the next generation of lighting. And by that they were specifically talking about solid state or LEDs as many of you I'm sure call them which they are but solid state is perhaps the more inclusive term. And they have done a darn good job I think technically. A lot of wonderful research has been done in manufacturing both manufacturing and fundamental research of LEDs. They're brought into the forefront of what we do. They are our new tools in our box. 95 percent of what we specify today as practitioners is an involves an LED source. It's by going through this program we have brought the source to a high level of efficiency and use much faster had it not been done that way. You can go on the website and see what's been done. I'm not going to dwell on these bullet points but a great deal of research and development of LEDs. And here's some wonderful interesting I'll just read one environmentally robust quantum dot down converters for highly efficient solid state lighting. I've got copies of that here so it's a highly technical field. However there have been some albeit I feel not that many exploratory programs done through the gateway program through the DOE that test some of the equipment in the field and that has been reasonably successful but we've barely scratched the surface of that potential. As design professionals in my case in lighting and certainly some of my colleagues in other fields we would like to see more hands on research work in the field post occupancy evaluation doing work in buildings where we can examine lighting and all its effects not just how much light I need. $450 million have been invested through the solid state lighting program of the DOE since 2005 much of it very well spent on the development of solid state lighting. I think that we would all benefit collectively just not our professions but at large the public and others to invest more in the outcome of using these new tools. So again major lighting influences you see on the screen here glare circadian influences visual comfort many of the things Bill actually mentioned about how air and air quality can have a bearing on your well-being in space in a space the same can be said in a different way for lighting we feel this is very important and there's a lot of opportunity for research in this area both indoor and out. I think what I want to do as I close my discussion is to talk about where this need where and why this needs to take place we can continue to develop and fine-tune solid state lighting as instrument as a lighting source and I think we should there's been some wonderful fruit out of that program but I think it's time collectively I think the federal government and other entities have an opportunity now to take this wonderful new tool and see that it's applied properly in the build environment now that might you might say well that's your job Randy well yeah okay to a certain degree it is but the success of LEDs and its its introduction to the marketplace from profession to professionals like me down to someone who goes to the local hardware store and plucks out a bulb off the shelf everyone will benefit from an investment in looking at lighting and environments and how it influences aspects of our environment that focus on well-being receptions of safety security all of these things there's much known about it but I think we can do a lot more development work in our research that can be then used by practitioners not only like myself but hopefully the public they'll mention GSA there's several other departments department of defense they do a lot of work in understanding glare and making visibility better for their armed forces on the field especially these are all things that are being done behind the scenes but I think a concerted research effort focusing on the value of light in the build environment can really improve all the built entity all the built buildings and construction that occurs in our country thank you for this time thanks Randy it's it's really interesting when you really stop and think about how we are affected how we are influenced by that kind of lighting in our environment I'll never forget several years ago meeting with folks as LEDs are being brought onto the market and and being shown pictures of and and then later experiencing the whole situation with regard to parking garages and you you mentioned safety an enormous change in the quality of light by putting LEDs in parking garages which totally made the atmosphere with regard to public safety so so different and so there are so many different attributes I remember also talking to architects about schools and what this means for learning and teaching environments and what it it can the difference that it makes in in schools and we all know what a difference it makes in terms of how I think how we feel but figuring out what really is going on so that we truly optimize all of these wonderful new developments that have been invested in that are now in the market to really understand how we can truly optimize it I think is is a very very important point so now to really try and kind of wrap up kind of what what we really need in this built environment to make sure that we truly are linking these things together thinking about what our buildings should really involve so that we truly are getting the most out of them that we're optimizing the the investment in those buildings how they're going to be used how they're going to be used for years how that's going to affect the people living working playing in those environments shopping in those environments we're going to hear now then from Ryan Kolker who has been working in the building sector for a long time I think that I first met him when he was working at at ASHRAE with as manager of government affairs but he also has been a vice president of the national institute of building sciences and of course he is currently the vice president of innovation at the international code council where he is responsible for identifying emerging issues in the building industry including how new technologies can best be leveraged by codes and standards and how we make sure to modernize the application of building regulations and the development of strategies that are going to support members and building safety professionals so to kind of put this all together and why codes are so important we will hear from from Ryan I know I usually think of codes as a tail that wags a very big dog thanks Carol I definitely appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning this afternoon and particularly the the linkage comment which is really you know what we're talking about today you know Bill and Randy certainly talked about very important aspects of the built environment I'll give you a few more but the thing that really brings all of that together is building codes I'm going to talk a little bit about you know what building codes are how they're developed how they're adopted and why we really need to have a renewed focus on making sure that folks are actually following building codes so the codes themselves actually cover many of the things that Bill and Randy talked about you know whether that's ventilation or radon the building enclosure which keeps the outside from the inside thinking about the materials themselves mold mildew filtration energy efficiency you know all of these various different topics are captured at a minimum level within the codes itself so as far as I'll actually go back the the model codes are actually developed through a process directed by the international code council where we bring together experts from you know across the entire industry stakeholders representing you know all aspects of the industry the public federal agencies researchers and they're they're able to provide input to the next edition of the building code the codes themselves are adopted and enforced at the state and local level and then they're also used as the basis for criteria within federal agencies so general services administration state department overseas buildings department of defense HUD all base their programs to some degree on baseline minimum codes that are developed through the ICC process in addition to all of the various different topics that Bill and Randy mentioned we have codes that address almost anything you could possibly imagine relative to the built environment so there's an energy efficiency code there's a wildland urban interface code to address those sorts of issues the international building code you know addresses structural aspects indoor aspects as well plumbing codes so really looking at all of those various different things that we care about relative to health safety and welfare in the built environment I'm going to touch on a couple things that are captured within the code highly relevant things that we've seen in the news right lately and then how the progression through the various different editions of the code actually get us closer to where we should be relative to building safety so folks may have been following this story relative to carbon monoxide in public housing and the fact that current HUD regulations actually don't capture the detection requirements to let residents know that they're actually being exposed to carbon monoxide so within the 2015 version of the international fire code it actually required installation of carbon monoxide sensors within new construction in most residential buildings shifting to the 2018 it actually provided a retroactive requirement within the fire code or application of carbon monoxide sensors in existing buildings so that the technology the requirements the information is captured there in the building code and so certainly as we see things moving from 2015 to the 2018 edition of the codes and we're providing new technologies new requirements and capturing the the latest information relative to what should be within the codes itself I think unfortunately right now 32 states actually don't require the 2015 level requirements of a carbon monoxide sensor in their codes and that's really a function of not keeping up to date with the building codes themselves another important you know thing to think about and we talked about schools certainly in tornado prone areas having storm shelters incorporated within schools again captured within the 2015 edition of the international building code yet only seven states within you know what we would consider tornado alley have those requirements in place and so thinking about what level of exposure that has for students teachers and you know anyone else visiting those facilities as well so again you know keeping up to date with codes is really an opportunity to capture those requirements a few additional things that have been captured within the latest editions of the building code in 2015 additional storm shelter requirements as I just talked about and not just for educational facilities but also for critical facilities as well again you know if you're not keeping up to date with these code requirements you're not capturing that benefit you know thinking about an interest in growing solar and renewable energy so you know new criteria for how solar panels are attached to buildings and how they influence the structural integrity of those buildings themselves you know special inspections for seismic resistance in seismic regions is another important element captured within the 2015 IBC and then moving to the 2018 codes you know even further structural improvements based off of new mapping that's provided through federal agencies like the geological survey and standard setting organizations like the American Society of Civil Engineers are captured into the latest editions of the codes and so being able to capture the latest information the latest research the latest knowledge is certainly important we talked about energy efficiency so certainly there are some opportunities to advance the resilience discussion through energy codes themselves so thinking about the durability of products the the ventilation requirements the filtration requirements even fire safety of you know making sure that gaps in buildings are sealed up to prevent fire spread thinking about you know mold and mildew and the ability to you know ventilate and keep moisture out of walls and trapping you know that moisture in so a whole host of different strategies that are covered by building codes but really only if we continue to you know make sure that that we're up to date and capturing those so in addition to just kind of the specific aspects of code themselves there's a body of research around you know what are we actually gaining through the the adoption of codes so a FEMA study looked at eight states in the southeast and found that 500 million dollars in annualized losses were avoided because of having codes in place thinking about windstorm losses since the adoption of the Florida building code which is based off of an ICC code those losses have been reduced by 72 percent because they had a code in place hail damage in Missouri a you know 15 to 30 percent reduction in losses because the code was in place and so all of these various different things really provide a snapshot as to why codes are important so you know I just kind of laid out you know why we should be thinking about the adoption of codes but so so why are we having this conversation today if codes provide you know all of these valuable things so as I mentioned on the outset codes and standards are typically adopted at a state and local level so this is a map that FEMA put together of where modern building codes are in place and you see there are some places that actually are not up to date on their building codes so how do we think about encouraging these communities to make sure that they're capturing all of those benefits that I talked about additionally as as Carol mentioned I was recently at the National Institute of Building Sciences which many of you may be familiar with the mitigation save study that's been conducted on the value of disaster and hazard mitigation investments the 401 number which folks you know have probably widely cited so they've actually gone through the effort to update and expand that study looking at a variety of different mitigation mechanisms and so one of the things that they looked at was actually the adoption of an up-to-date building code and so they found that the one dollar invested in adoption of a 2018 building code resulted in 11 dollars of benefit to the community and that that benefit accrues from the continual adoption of building codes and as you can see you know it's across various different hazards but certainly you know the benefit at a national level of one dollar invested for 11 dollars of benefit is certainly critical and then looking across all the various different things that that feed into that number so property loss is certainly a key piece of that business interruption you know injuries death you know all of these things are part of you know what you get when you adopt an up-to-date building code and then certainly thinking kind of the you know adoption is is one piece of the puzzle and you can't have an effective code system without the adoption itself but the second piece is actually enforcement making sure that you know people are on the ground providing education you know providing enforcement and inspections to make sure that these things are actually implemented and so that's certainly another key area you know where you know activity within the building code space is important as I mentioned you know federal agencies have certainly picked up the benefits of building codes themselves so you know FEMA has established building codes as one of the key aspects and key objectives of their strategic plan the community development block grant disaster recovery piece has building codes as a cornerstone certainly gsa and do d are implementing codes within their practices consumer product safety commission as well and then certainly on a congressional level you know I certainly commend Congress for their recent activities around recognizing the benefits that codes have through the disaster recovery reform act the bipartisan budget act but there's certainly many opportunities to continue that effort and many outlets to make sure that communities are capturing the benefits that are provided by building codes you know one key aspect as part of the ongoing discussion around infrastructure investments you know any federal dollar that goes towards any sort of infrastructure should be built to the minimum requirements of the latest code and many in you know many agencies they actually defer to the state or local requirements as to the basis of what the codes are and I showed you the map earlier of where modern building codes are in place so in some places you know those code requirements are incredibly old or are not in place at all and so you know any federal dollar that we're investing in schools in hospitals and community centers should all be tied towards the latest building code criteria also certainly as congress continues to talk about flood insurance program again you know minimum code requirements tied to the latest addition of the codes will certainly capture a significant benefit you know the NFIP already captures a little bit of the benefits of codes within the the community rating system but certainly there are other opportunities to attach minimum requirements around up-to-date codes and then finally you know as Bill mentioned there are many agencies that are involved in research and development that support codes a technical assistance that supports codes and so being able to support those through appropriate appropriations is certainly a key area to continue that discussion moving forward and assure that we are capturing the most up-to-date research and knowledge within the building codes itself and then finally on an exciting note may is building safety month so you know certainly look forward to everybody celebrating building safety month ICC is hosting a reception on May 22nd so certainly you know we would love to have you there but it's really an opportunity to amplify the message that you know building safety is an important piece of our nation building codes and code officials are important supporters of that effort we're getting proclamations from across all levels of government city state local working with federal agencies as well and so really an opportunity to amplify that message you know broader than folks in this room but to the public themselves thank you thanks so much Ryan and one thing I wanted to take note of too is that you are also the director of the Alliance for National and Community Resilience so in conjunction with that I have an opening question which is in terms of thinking about the messages around codes how it is connected to all of these issues and in terms of public health and safety so how are these communities that are part of this group how are how are they responding to this message and and how do we get more communities to do that because we also saw that map that you put up there which means that a lot of them aren't right exactly so anchor is actually working on developing benchmarks that communities can really use to understand where they are and where they can be going relative to and so we're looking at all of the various different functions that communities have so buildings is certainly a key piece of that looking at housing looking at healthcare educational facilities you know transportation networks all of those various different aspects that make communities work and so the first benchmark we actually released was on buildings and some of the fundamental requirements or benchmarks you know within the building's benchmark itself is actually looking at your code system you know do you have an up-to-date code do you provide education and training to your code officials to your contractors um you know thinking about all of those different strategies and so you know the the communities that have been engaged in in anchor have recognized that as a fundamental aspects of you know any approach to resilience you can't be a resilient community if you don't have an up-to-date building code you're just you're not capturing the benefits that code provide and you're not your building stock is not up to bar great um let's let's open it up for questions and comments we'll start here yeah so you can go to iccsafe.org and the government relations page we'll have all that information in the next couple weeks actually as part of building safety month we'll be releasing a map that should be incredibly helpful that you can click on and just dive into you know what specific codes are in place within your community and provide you resources to actually do something about it so that's how we all can figure out what is happening in our local jurisdiction that's that's great um any other comments or questions back here sure what do you think the barriers are to uh the states and local communities to adopt so the question is about what are the barriers okay yeah so you know each each community is certainly different and there you know a variety of different reasons as to you know why communities don't adopt uh the latest codes uh in some cases it's a state-level decision and and local you know governments don't have the ability to adopt codes unless the state says they can and so that creates sort of a political process at a state level some states have a almost an automatic kind of update process that as new additions of the code come out you know they they go through a review process but it's you know pretty pretty streamlined um some cases you know it's a very long drawn out um deliberative process uh you know with committees uh at a state level um sometimes it's a legislative action uh and so you know there are a variety of different mechanisms um the challenge is you know you have stakeholders from numerous different positions uh that are you know like the status quo um but I think one of the uh important things that came out of the the National Institute of Building Sciences study was actually looking at all of the various different stakeholders within the design construction and occupancy process and found that every single stakeholder actually had a net benefit from adopting and enforcing up-to-date building codes so I think it's a matter of you know making sure that folks that are concerned about assuring codes are in place are engaged at the state and local level to say that it's an important you know consumer protection issue uh uh you know uh safety issue uh and so you know having the public involved uh to maybe counter uh you know some of the uh you know folks in opposition to updating codes I think would certainly be beneficial as well. A follow-up on that um is that has that been well publicized in terms of you know showing how everybody how every sector every state every um you know stakeholder has a benefit actually that comes out of this? Um I wouldn't say it's widely publicized yet but certainly something that we're working on um there is a an effort uh to get consumers uh you know more engaged and interested in uh codes at a local level uh so that no codes no confidence project is really looking at uh you know assuring consumers have the information uh it is basically what that research found is that folks are assuming that their local government is protecting them and that they're up-to-date on building codes but don't necessarily have the knowledge that that's actually the case. Okay um this question could be for anybody that's uh directed forward towards building this virtue um say that that state codes standards federal federal requirements are acknowledge the indoor environmental quality aspects the toxins etc that they were speaking to in terms of the wellness and the health um the benefits I think we've all seen the hurricanes all the natural disasters I think especially congress is familiar with that cost benefit analysis but do you think folks are as aware of the cost benefit analysis from the health well-being and you know in the indoor environmental quality side of things? Do you sort of repeat the question? Um yeah the question was do codes reflect or count for sort of the indoor environmental effects um and I say to some extent they do um in many cases the codes are minimum requirements and the research shows that going beyond the minimum can provide further benefits um also the codes sort of tend to lag in time sort of behind the the state of knowledge but the codes are incredibly important they provide a really important baseline and they're one of the most you know effective ways to get change so I'm a strong supporter of codes and improving codes um but we do also have to make sure those codes are enforced and I think there's some you know Ryan mentioned that there's some big gaps in terms of enforcement for example I mentioned schools where it looks like on average we provide half of the amount of outside air ventilation that's the minimum amount specified in in codes as an example of where enforcement really doesn't happen. So Bill I was rather horrified when you made that comment about um about 50 percent of the schools not having adequate ventilation so what and for any of you what is the best way to encourage compliance what all needs to be done and you can all answer that question. Well Bill grabs a drink the question is valid for lighting as well I think historically and I think you probably agree Ryan that most codes will treat lighting as as simply a number you need so much light you can only you can only use so much energy and so forth which are important frameworks for a code to establish and they're ones that are quantifiable enforceable to a degree I think what we look for in codes we'd like to see more acknowledgement of some of the elements that both Bill and I were talking about earlier the quality of sort of the quality of the environment whether it's visual or oral or Bill's case with airflow and and toxins I think they're the code should be elastic enough to allow professionals to address those issues with their clients beyond what the code minimum might be and again it's an important framework but I think codes could encourage going beyond the minimum as part of their language to seek out professionals for example when they they feel that this particular aspect of a of their buildings should be addressed and I think that having that sort of elasticity to the code process would help encourage professionals and frankly the end user to ask more questions about well I know it's enough but what else can I do to make the employees in my building happy or the people in my home happier and I think there's a role for codes in that I certainly as a professional we preach that and we talk to our clients but I think just making codes friendly to those kinds of things is probably one of the best things we can do right well and I think there's a specific federal opportunity here as well when we talk about schools you know you know billions of dollars in grants are you know provided for school construction and so you know assuring that you know those buildings are you know built to at least the the minimum requirements but then also you know having a regular process for assuring that you know those those ongoing requirements are actually continuing to be met potentially as you know qualification for future grant funding certainly could be an opportunity but also you know providing technical assistance to communities who may not have you know the resources in-house to be able to really you know assure that they're meeting those requirements I think would be you know an opportunity as well well and I would bet that there are a lot of communities where people aren't even sure what questions to ask and that that could be that whole education part could be really really important let alone in terms of getting the right professionals and to really look at it and to to move that forward and and I think the school issue that you raise with regard to codes is is also really important when we're thinking about all of the different kinds of things that are in the air in our buildings and everything when you've got new materials coming in in terms of equipment furniture building materials or whatever that off gas and what that means particularly with there's not adequate ventilation and and also with kids whose bodies are their systems are still in development which creates even greater vulnerability so I would think that there should be several agencies that at the federal level that would be concerned from a health perspective with regard to yeah and also you know in many communities the schools are the shelters or you know emergency events as well so there they're not just impacts on you know the kids that go there every day but thinking about the broader impacts to the community as well yeah I think it's worth mentioning that oftentimes we look at codes or people look at codes as I've got to meet the code I got to meet the code and maybe it's one watt a square foot or whatever from our perspective and the code isn't an end all it's a framework for engineering and design to take place in the build environment and I think there's an education process I think the professional organizations like ASHRAE the ILD the IES can educate our colleagues certainly but I also feel there's probably ways that we can build work with our code teams to build in language to maybe in the user guide version of the the code book that helps the people recognize when they have to pay even deeper attention to an issue not just to the code required you want to add anything Bill or of course the codes are incredibly important they actually affect change very broadly in the population but there tend to be minimum standards and they're often not actually enforced in practice so we have a ways to go to improve those but they're just incredibly important and we need to keep moving forward with codes pushing adoption of codes but also letting people understand part of the health and economic and productivity benefits of better indoor environments that have exceeding requirements as well right we shouldn't be only about the minimum but indeed going beyond since so on that point because compliance is such a major issue I was just curious what is your experience about code compliance say in the EU or in terms of codes and and compliance any of the same issues or are they better about it than what we are here in the US or what can you speak to that at all Mr. International Code Council yeah I mean you know I guess one thing to think about relative to you know code adoption and enforcement elsewhere the US actually has a unique kind of development process itself so the codes are developed through the engagement of you know the private sector government you know manufacturers all coming together under a private sector driven process which allows then you know states and local governments you know to adopt those codes and and transform them as they see fit within their local environment in in almost every other country codes are actually developed by the government and so you know there's certainly a you know a tie there to enforcement you know if it's a government product that's enforced you know through governmental channels usually you know in a kind of a centralized way you know it's a very different type of process than we have here but you know it America's built off you know the work of the private sector and assuring that everyone has a seat at the table it's a very different type of process but the difference in the process does end up with it sounds like more difficulty in terms of getting compliance here than what it may perhaps in the EU or am I misunderstanding yeah I wouldn't necessarily say that I think you have less less centralized control over enforcement here because of the process of development but also you know code adoption is a state and local issue right and so that creates another level of challenge for widespread enforcement at a particular level just one more I think important comment the codes tend to focus on the design features of buildings so they come in effect when you build a new building or you do a major rehab of a building but they don't really say a speak as much about operation as they do design and so a lot of the problems that we get actually have to do with things like operation and maintenance as well they'll spot on with that I think we really lack a lot of post occupancy research to find out exactly what the root of the problem is we can design wonderful buildings on paper and have them the equipment put in those buildings but if they're not operated long term that way they never realize their true potential whether it's influencing users within the building or simply just meeting code requirements I think post occupancy acknowledgement is something we can do a much better job as job with so how do you do that you you waste it you answer it okay fair enough fair enough how do you do post occupancy evaluation we're any of you yeah no that's a very good question and we try to informally do our own post occupancy evaluations talking to our clients how did that work out going to visit them but that's not that we often don't share that with other people it's more anecdotal but I think there can be a lot more work done it takes money to do it but to survey buildings certainly federal buildings there's been some post occupancy work done in daylighting and there's been some recent work done in circadian influences in the build environment I think more of that will better inform the design professionals and ultimately code professionals as to how we design buildings and how they're used I find a lot about I learned a lot about lighting by going back and seeing how something I did previously is still working in fact I'm old enough to tell you I'm redesigning projects I designed 30 years ago who did that oh we did that okay but that we learned by doing and we also learned by examining how our buildings are used on a day-to-day basis and certainly from a lighting perspective that's true and certainly as I think as bill brought up in operations it's you're only as good as once you've leave shut the door and go on to your next project as as the operations team is on site a couple things you know relative to that so you know as far as the the ongoing operations of buildings and codes there are certainly some criteria primarily around life safety that require ongoing enforcement but some of the areas you know like energy efficiency indoor environmental quality the code itself doesn't necessarily have kind of those ongoing requirements often look to you know other you know departments within the city to handle that so whether that's the health department or you know if there's a energy or a housing department there are a couple opportunities you know within the code process itself you know to start to capture you know those ongoing aspects you know so Randy mentioned you know organizations like GSA who have design construction and operations expertise and so being able to you know provide input to the code process of what has worked within GSA facilities for instance would would be a great opportunity one thing that we also have within the 2015 international green construction code is actually a pathway for energy efficiency based on outcomes so instead of just design based criteria actually showing that you've met some energy targets and so that's kind of the the leading edge of thinking about how to capture the entire life cycle of a building within the codes process sort of elaborate and then I think you know increasingly there's opportunities to monitor how buildings perform over time in label buildings or have that information available and I think that that can be helpful not everything easily monitored and labeled but there are some opportunities there any questions or comments I didn't mean to dominate the questions I just had a number anybody else okay here and then we'll go I was wondering yeah so I mean there's certainly an expanded interest in moving towards you know more performance based requirements within codes in a variety of different spaces you know earthquake and seismic design is certainly one of them you know certainly as you know Randy mentioned you know lighting quality is not a prescriptive requirement it would require a performance based requirement so there's certainly discussions you know around those sorts of things you know thinking about an outcome based process is you know more performance driven ICC does have a performance code which is centered around performance you know based opportunities where you kind of set what the desired outcome is and that's what you design towards it does take a little bit more kind of verification and enforcement and you know the engagement of professionals to actually you know assure that you're achieving those performance requirements but I think also as we continue to move forward with computing capacity and artificial intelligence and all of these sorts of things we can think about more performance focused requirements and being able to enforce to those rather than you know prescriptive requirements themselves well I think performance including performance criteria in codes ultimately would be a wonderful leap forward I once had a client say to me if we were discussing different ways to light their new corporate headquarters is Randy if you could assure me a 1% improvement in productivity we can pay for this lighting before the project's over we really can move the needle with improved environments whether it's light sound air performance is what it's about now the performance might be working in a factory where you don't want to lose a finger it might be working in an office where you don't want to make a mistake with the spreadsheet or on your computer you don't want reflected glare for you to miss something it might be and it'll be something different in a hospital and school and so forth but there are better and better it's a better understanding of what those performance metrics might be and eventually I think some of those can be employed in post occupancy evaluations and then ultimately maybe make their way back to Ryan not you personally Ryan to look at ways they could be brought into the code process even if it's just referencing these sort of performance techniques if you want to go over and above the limit or the the minimum qualification in the code I never wanted to have a surgeon who had just the minimum qualifications and I'm not sure I want to work in an environment who just meets the minimums and I know that's true it's the design professionals the engineers will help elevate that in general to your question but I think ultimately it would be nice to be able to inform the process a bit on the front end to add to halver to the complexity here and that when you're talking about human outcomes like performance or health there are many factors that affect those those outcomes and the built environment condition is just one of many and and one of maybe that factors has a small effect you know the training of the people you know their home situations you know whether they like their bus you know the tools that people have so it's very hard to you know accept the research to isolate the effects of the environment on the performance or the health of the people and that makes it challenging to use those kinds of metrics in an ongoing way you know in in mass and buildings so how do we make it less daunting for all of us who are ordinary consumers and inhabitants of buildings and and then also the whole role of daylighting in terms of thinking about our buildings yeah so as far as the the the public itself we've actually compiled all of that information into the code itself so you know it's more about making sure that the the code documents are up to date within your community rather than you know each individual consumer knowing that you know I need a ventilation rate of x within you know my community you already captured you know within the code itself as a minimum level of requirements now certainly opportunities you know to go above and beyond those within your community itself and that's you know where you know professionals from you know organizations you know like iald and ashray and ai and others can really help the community to decide you know what is that particular you know above and beyond level um so you know certainly advocating you know for for the code itself captures you know a whole host of these you know different benefits speak to your question about daylighting certainly as a lighting design professional I think about daylight and all my projects if possible and how it can be used if there's been a lot of good research and post occupancy studies that demonstrate I think rather convincingly that access to daylight good daylight you can have bad quality daylight too I had to close this when I first came in you wouldn't have seen any of my slides right so I mean there's a functional attribute there but access to daylight views out views out of the building can improve that well-being about working in a space or dwelling in a space so I daylighting is something I think most professionals think about I love I would like to see more advocates out there talking about daylight and some states I must give them credit California it sometimes can be difficult to practice in California a lot of codes there that are pretty stringent and but there are there's been some great initiatives regarding daylighting and views and the access to daylight and so forth even to the point of changing building design so they're narrower and allowing more people access so I think that's something that's vital and we should all really consider that great thank you um are there any final comments that any of you wanted to make to leave with our audience are there any final questions but otherwise I want to give you the final right at the apple definitely really appreciate the opportunity to be here um you know if folks are interested in you know anything relative to codes resilience sustainability certainly um you know let me know be happy to to talk with you and and happy building safety month well there you go and don't forget about the reception right so uh randy okay great well thanks again for the opportunity just talking about these things it's kind of interesting for colleagues to get together in this sort of setting to talk about things they don't know what they're going they're their colleagues are going to say and we all deal with each other's disciplines and uh these kinds of discussions I think are very helpful in general um but from my perspective somewhat selfish as a lighting design professional and and certainly the international association of the lighting designers who asked me here I think just consider lighting outside the the numbers so to speak and it influences our lives it's not about just the quality of the light it's really about the quality of our lives and I think everything you all have been talking about really gets to the health the quality of our lives and how we all function and what it represents whether it's kids in preschool up through you know all of us in terms of our work a day lives and and our homes and everything so I there is so much here and I think so much more information that needs to get out on an ongoing basis and it sounds like a lot more kind of education a lot more technical assistance to communities through I know I hear from state energy offices a lot about how important co-compliance is and making sure that people have resources to get trained in co-compliance to make sure that that happens and everything because I think all of this stuff listening to you all to me it's like all of this is much more important than what we ever ever think that it possibly could be because all of these things are so interconnected so thank you all very very much help me help thank the panel