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TECHNOLOGY BEST PRACTICE AIDS ECONOMIC RECOVERY & DEVELOPMENT

By Samantha Wenger posted Aug 06,2013 11:00 AM

  


Written by Robert Wible, Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age & Fiatech Senior Project Manager

Demands for greater efficiency in government is driving more state and local government agencies to deliver traditional services in non-traditional ways including the accessing of government regulations.

Why should this be a concern of State and local CIOs?

The statutes and technical provisions that govern construction differ widely from region to region, state to state and between local jurisdictions within the states.  While nearly all codes are based upon national models and some of states have a uniform building code that cannot be amended, there are well over 30,000 jurisdictions that adopt and enforce different building codes and standards. 

This creates a nightmare situation for investors, building owners, the construction community and the public, significantly reducing the efficiency of our regulatory system.   How do you know which codes and standards apply in your jurisdiction?

The cost of a single error in building to the wrong technical provisions can be disastrous.  Complexity and confusion can result in companies deciding to build elsewhere and significant losses of tax revenues.

CIOs play a critical role in assuring that both the public and private sectors have accurate access to information vital to the public’s health, life safety and welfare and to conducting business in their community.

Currently most State and local portals provide very little data access to the statutes and regulations for the design, and of buildings. CIOs, however, can address this by supporting the development and use of a  cloud that exists for such regulations which is now being expanded to include code provisions for the nation’s 5,000 largest local jurisdictions, the “U.S. Local Codes in the Cloud Project.”

In 1995 Compu-tecture, Inc, established the first HTML version Model Building Codes and Standards e-Library technology.  MADCAD.com today offers more than 50,000 Model Building Codes and Standards as well as state-wide codes in a searchable and continuously updated cloud.

A consortium at the University of Texas, Fiatech recently approved the “U.S. Local Codes in the Cloud” project to expand the data in MADCAD.com cloud by adding 5,000 local jurisdictions amendments to model codes and standards. Cities and counties putting their data into this cloud will enable architects and engineers to design without undertaking days of technical research and repeated visits to government offices.  

CIO’s interested in learning more about the benefits of this project can do so by visiting the Fiatech website at:
http://fiatech.org/webinars/archived-webinars/2013-webinars, and viewing a webinar or they can contact either Robert Wible, Fiatech Senior Project Manager at wible@fiatech.org or the chair of the project team, Pelin Atasoy, CEO of Compu-tecture, Inc at: patasoy@madcad.com.


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