Talk:International Code Council

Need for Global Scope

I've added a small note regarding the use of the term 'International'. I think this wikipedia page is a very important page for location for information about topics such as their chosen name of such organizations and the conflicts with other such organizations specifically because you can't find such information on their sites. In order to better understand how the model codes are formed along with the reach, influence, ambitions and limits of these organizations, it is helpful to have a location that is an objective third party. I applaud the inclusion of the issues regarding the NFPA. Please do not remove, rather inhance such topics. These organizations have a good purpose and are helpful, but will not tell you the whole story in an effort to better promote their organizations. Brant Fetter (talk) 18:50, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Presumably this marker suggests more information on how the international building code is internationally applicable, but I suspect that it has been placed there for the same reason that some people object to the naming of the "World Series".

I suggest that information is added on the following... "international" refers to the intended applicability of the code. If anyone has information on how the code has been applied in other countries, then this should be mentioned. For example. the UBC was used as the basis for the national building code of the Philippines, and the seismic provisions were borrowed (with some modifications) by codes in the Caribbean, Taiwan, India and in the Middle East (among others). I don't know if any now follow the approach in the IBC. --Muchado (talk) 05:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

ICC website indicates; "Fifty states and the District of Columbia have adopted the I-Codes at the state or jurisdictional level. Federal agencies including the Architect of the Capitol, General Services Administration, National Park Service, Department of State, U.S. Forest Service and the Veterans Administration also enforce the I-Codes. The Department of Defense references the International Building Code for constructing military facilities, including those that house U.S. troops, domestically and abroad. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands enforce one or more of the I-Codes."-http://www.iccsafe.org/AboutICC/Pages/default.aspx Ottawa4ever (talk) 09:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Existing structures

Anyone have any information to back up claims made about the National Register? I found a statment on here that local governments can require buildings on the National Register to meet local codes. I removed a statement that said it "merely recognized architecural or historical importance." This isn't completely true. An issue came up with a building on the National Registry and some building codes where I used to live. The city was unable to require the building to meet some of the building codes because the specific building was on the National Register. This also seems to conflict with a section above about New Jersey and historic buildings.Squad51 18:19, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I removed another section about demolition, etc. This happened with the same building earlier when the city wanted to condemn the building and expand a new park. The city found out they couldn't do that, either.Squad51 18:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I removed a references link to codecomply.com. This is blatant advertising; there are tons of these code sites out there. It added nothing to the article. Wildwalleye (talk) 15:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The Building Code and Existing Building Code apply to existing historic structures as they apply to any existing building. However, where a particular code application would require work to adversely affect a part of the building that is critical to its historic integrity, the owner is able to request a waiver of the requirement from the officer that is in charge of the historic designation (state, local or national). If the code requirement does not affect the historic character then it is required to meet the code. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geneboecker (talk • contribs) 22:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Building Code article

This is not appropriate, and I propose to remove the suggestion shortly. The IBC is an instance of a building code and should not be confused with the category and concept of a building code, which is what the "Building Code" article covers. --Muchado (talk) 05:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Disagree with suggestion to merge Uniform Building Code here. They are different publications.Newell Post (talk) 20:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

IBC uses US Customary Units

This book is written in U.S. Customary Units. (To my knowledge,) U.S Customary Units are used in all fifty States.

Based on a look through a public copy, this building code uses imperial units such as feet. Consequently it is very very unlikely to be adopted more widely - almost else is metric (even confused canada where imperial dimentioned construction materials are still used has rewritten its code to specify metric first). The opening paragraph should be changed to make it clear that this is a US specific code developed by a US based organization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.233.85.43 (talk) 21:08, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed Ottawa4ever (talk) 13:07, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, the IBC gives all measurements in both U.S. and metric (S.I.) units.ScribeMonk (talk) 19:04, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Merger with Uniform Building Code

A merger was proposed earlier to merge Uniform Building code into this article; please see teh subsequent discussion on the related talk page here; Talk:Uniform_Building_Code Ottawa4ever (talk) 10:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Proposed merge of International Code Council (ICC) into International Building Code

No evidence of notability for the council itself apart from in connection with the code: International Code Council, the correct title for this article, already redirects to the code, as it should. PamD 17:22, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Update: the article has now been moved over the redirect, but it still seems not to have any information which isn't already in the article on the code. PamD 18:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

• Agreed, all of the content of the new article is already present in this article so I've just gone ahead and redirected it here again – Thjarkur (talk) 20:33, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

  resurrecting an old thread - I would like to move the contents of this article back to the ICC page, as the IBC is only one portion of the codes ICC presides over. It makes more sense to have a page for the ICC with details on each of the code families it manages. If no feedback is provided in a reasonable timeframe I will likely make this move and redirect. Pdubs.94 (talk) 05:12, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 20 February 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Adumbrativus (talk) 03:43, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

---

International Building Code → International Code Council – The International Building Code (IBC) is only one portion of the codes the International Code Council (ICC) presides over. It makes more sense to have a page for the ICC with details on each of the code families it manages. Pdubs.94 (talk) 18:38, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this move would be wise. Thenightaway (talk) 19:03, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WP:NPOV and Manual of Style issues

It looks like User:Kota T Wharton was trying to keep the lead paragraphs relatively neutral and then this edit on 1 March 2025 by User:Thenightaway screwed that up.

I agree that the ICC is deserving of criticism, but the correct approach per WP:NPOV and the WP Manual of Style would have been to include it much later in the article and only vaguely allude to such criticism at the start. Frontloading all that criticism is grossly unbalanced, reads like a polemic, and is inconsistent with WP's core principle of neutrality.

The criticism also fails to recognize that the ICC's rigidly prescriptive approach to rulemaking does have clear benefits in terms of saving lives and protecting property value. The United States has not suffered anything like the Grenfell Tower fire or the ensuing cladding crisis, because of the IBC's bright-line rule on flammable cladding. The Grenfell Tower inquiry revealed numerous flaws in the functional approach. Coolcaesar (talk) 12:39, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for bringing that up. A few points:

• I agree with your comment about "frontloading" criticism. The following sentences should be moved into the appropriate sections: The ICC's model codes have been criticized for inflating housing costs and reducing housing supply in the United States through arbitrary and stringent standards that do little for safety and are out of sync with best practices in other countries. The IBC has contributed to the spread of 5-over-1 type of buildings across the US and contributed to a lack of medium-density housing (so-called "missing middle housing"). And: According to the American Libertarian think tank Cato Institute, "Building code rules can add significantly to the cost of constructing new housing. Codes have ballooned in length and complexity", additionally, "...building code changes adopted just since 2012 account for 11 percent of the cost of building new apartments..." Equally out of place, though, is the ICC's self-view: According to the ICC, the IBC is intended to protect public health and safety while avoiding both unnecessary costs and preferential treatment of specific materials or methods of construction.

:* I'm a bit more sceptical than you about Kota T Wharton's (KTW) contribution to the article. KTW also attempted to water down bits if information, that the ICC might not be happy to see in the lead section, but still remain essential points. KTW tried to frame the ICC as a "potential" international organisation, which is demonstrably untrue. And KTW also deleted the sentence that ICC's codes are rarely used outside the US (sourced by a reputable third-party publication). It's worth pointing out that both pieces of information are not "criticism", but simply essential points for curious readers who might be under the wrong impression by the misleading word "International" in the ICC's name (similarly it's not "criticism" in the lead section to point out that red pandas - despite their name - are not really related to giant pandas). I won't further speculate about KTW's motives here, but their edits didn't strike me as particularly neutral. Struck accusation of non-neutral motives per WP:NPA; see WP:AGF and WP:TALK

• It's interesting that you bring up international comparisons, because that happens to be one of the most damning points of criticism directed at the ICC (strangely absent from the article so far): The US has signficantly higher numbers of fire deaths per capita than many other developed nations, including the UK (page 63). It's an old game to say "well, that particular incident couldn't have happened here, because...", but what counts most is the broader picture, and that look actually quite grim. One could be charitable and say, that the US death toll could be far bigger, if it wasn't for the ICC, or one could be less charitable (as many critics are) and say that the ICC consistently focuses on aspects that could potentially bring marginal benefits at best (and are typically unquantifiable), while ignoring more salient questions. Anyway, applauding the ICC's "benefits in terms of saving lives and protecting property value" is really quite bizarre from a data perspective.

Cheers, Mai-Sachme (talk) 17:07, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with your reading of the CTIF report. The statistics are severely distorted because most countries are missing from most charts. There are 195 countries in the world but most of the charts in the report list less than 40 countries.

Also, the issue of per capita deaths is misleading. The point I was trying to make is that the ICC's prescriptive approach has resulted in less MCIs. ICC bright line rules are crude but effective tools.

If you look at domestic data, there are other factors that feed into the higher per capita rate in the United States. For example, the United States has a large number of senior citizens who die alone in fires, especially in rural states like Alaska. Old people are less able to perform proper building maintenance, are slower to react both physically and mentally, and are more easily overcome by flames and smoke. In other countries, people either don't live long enough or live in larger extended family units that are better able to react to fire emergencies. --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:27, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

I wrote "developed nations", no point comparing the US to other countries unless you want to benchmark the benefits of the IBC against South Sudan or Papua New Guinea... Since you brought up life expectancy: In the peer group of developed countries, the US doesn't do particularly well, and old people living alone isn't (again: among developed countries) an American phenomenon. Mai-Sachme (talk) 16:55, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Well, my point is that most developed nations aren't on most of those charts in the CTIF report, so when you cite that, you're comparing oranges to apples.

And Americans aren't that healthy to begin with, but the ICC has nothing to do with that. My point, again, is that unlike people elsewhere, Americans are not dropping dead in fire-related MCIs by the hundreds or unable to refinance their homes by the thousands. This all came out in hours and hours of extensive expert testimony in the Grenfell Tower inquiry: that writing vague codes that allow the exercise of too much discretion on life safety issues tends to have bad consequences.

In contrast, an American contractor faced with pressure to control costs can point to bright-line rules in the code and stand their ground. And that is how we end up with horror stories about affordable housing costing over $600,000 per unit. But at least the working-class people who live in those units will have a chance to escape alive if the building is on fire, because they have the benefit of wide corridors with a staircase at each end, fire-resistant materials, and mandatory sprinklers. This is all assuming they are not overcome by smoke first because they have poor respiratory health or find themselves unable to maneuver through partially blocked pathways due to severe obesity. But those issues are not the ICC's problem. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:03, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

I spoke about 1 chart in particular and the only developed countries missing there are Canada, Australia and Italy. That seems quite different to me than "most developed nations aren't on most of those charts". But look, I don't know, what your intentions are and where you think this discussion is supposed to be going now.

You originally wrote that we should acknowledge the IBC's "clear benefits in terms of saving lives and protecting property value". While I accept this as your opinion, we can't use that in the article, unless a reputable third-party source clearly links the IBC to the benefits you mentioned. My reply simply pointed out, that from a data perspective I don't see any indication these "benefits" actually exist (they could, but they also couldn't). The average American is_more_likely to die by fire than inhabitants of most of the developed world, no matter how often you continue to repeat that Grenfell couldn't possibly happen in the US. There are multiple reasons for that (e.g. the US makes more use of wood as structural material than many other countries, but hey, a building code could actually tackle that...), but the points you presented as explanations are simply not based on facts. Mai-Sachme (talk) 15:10, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

on the need for update

Sadly I can't work on updates, but here are some additional resources for updating: https://www.aceee.org/blog-post/2026/03/building-energy-codes-could-weaken-under-new-plan-raising-bills ~2026-27731-52 (talk) 15:58, 7 May 2026 (UTC)