INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
New code would break materials barrier If it becomes law next year, New York City's proposed building code could have nationwide impact In the not too distant future, registered architects and licensed engineers in New York City may be able to accept new construction materials for a specific building project. The materials would have to meet health, fire, and construction safety standards given in the proposed new city building code (C&EN, Nov. 21, page 21) and would be subject to approval by the city's Building Department. Such materials would join a number of other building products which would be permitted in New York City for the first time under the proposed code. These include prestressed and precast concrete and a variety of presently excluded forms of plastics, copper, cast iron, tile, and aluminum (see box). The all-inclusive proposed code could have national significance, its backers feel. It follows a relatively new, nonrestrictive, performance-based style employing national standards. This approach, not without its problems, has also found acceptance in cities such as Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. The New York City proposal's 1400page text is the product of four and a half years of drafting at a cost of more than $1 million to the city and construction industry. The new code was written by a private professional group under the direction of Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Presently under review by city agencies, the document could clear Mayor Lindsay's office by the end of the year and be acted on by the City Council early in 1967. At present, only the barest innovation in building materials is possible in New York City. The city's billiondollar construction industry, like many others in the U.S., writhes in a tangle of dated building regulations, overlapping jurisdictions, and entrenched special interests. The causes and net frustration were described by industry executives and city officials themselves at a conference of the Building Research Institute in Washington earlier this month. To relieve the confusion, the new code completely recasts New York City's building policy, according to the code's creators. Besides opening the materials situation, the proposed code also sets other targets: 28 C&EN NOV. 28, 1966
• Introduction of new types of construction such as shell-, plate-, and cable-support methods; air-supported structures for temporary use; and new theater design. • Savings in construction costs—up to 10%— which could stimulate development of industrial parks and encourage new apartments, new schools, and slum clearance. (More building would increase tax revenue for the city, which already derives over half its income from real estate taxes, occupancy taxes, and sales taxes on materials. ) • Savings in design and construction time by as much as six months through increased inspection by architects and engineers instead of by city employees and through simplified processing of plans, building permits, and certificates of occupancy. •Safety and welfare improvement through revised fire districting, pioneer noise control measures (written under supervision of the code's mechanical engineering consultant, Meyer, Strong & Jones), stricter control of materials with high flame characteristics, and required facilities for the handicapped. • Continuous future updating through a new seven-member Building Code Commission, which would be empowered to adopt, repeal, and amend building code provisions. The new code executes these strokes with a greatly consolidated series of 19 articles. This new organization would replace the jumble of provisions in the old code, which was originally, put together at the turn of the century. The last actual revision began in 1928 and spanned eight years, during which 19 volunteer committees met 476 times to bring the code into the thirties. Since then, the City Council has added numerous other provisions. The result is that, at present, even single substances (concrete, for example) are covered in several different sections. The present rewriting campaign started officially in April 1962, when Brooklyn Poly signed a contract with the city to draft a new building code. The code was written largely by four major New York consultants under a Brooklyn Polytechnic executive board
chaired by Prof. Charles E. Schaffner. The code drafts were reviewed by more than 100 interested agencies across the country and a 21-man New York Industry Advisory Committee, last headed by consulting mechanical engineer John F. Hennessy. The final draft was submitted in September. Principles governing the rewriting had been recommended in a 1961 study which Brooklyn Poly made for three industry sponsors. The institute concluded then that the city building code should be completely rewritten. Brooklyn Poly advised that a new code stress performance standards rather than individual specifications for materials; use as a guide the prototype code of the Building Officials Conference of America (BOCA); and represent the combined counsel of professional, trade, industry, and city groups as given to a private professional writing body. The code writers stuck to the orig-
GOING UP. Construction in New York City is billion-dollar industry
Brooklyn Poly's Schaffner Four and a half years
Industry's Hennessy Advice from 21
inal guidelines, although they found the project fraught with nonconforming situations. The project's technical director, William H. Correale, comments, "In some instances where reference material was not available, the consultants prepared their own. In a number of instances, national standards were modified in part to accommodate conditions in New York City and in part to incorporate new material not yet published by the national standards committees." Much of the challenge came in keeping the new code on an open, performance-based course. Structural engineering adviser Thomas C. Kavanagh (of Praeger-Kavanagh-Waterbury, consultant on the code), sees the nonrestrictive style as a trend in building codes, even though there is a major lack of critical tests for measuring performance. New York is not alone in facing the performance dilemma. Speaking at the Washington conference, James A. Cortese, chief engineer of Pittsburgh's
Bureau of Building Inspections, outlined the subtleties involved. When a city has a performance code (as does Pittsburgh), approval of new materials depends on test ratings by recognized agencies. These agencies are often conservative and can wait as long as two years to pass a product. The resulting temptation is to pack specific materials requirements into building codes to avoid agency delays. But then, Mr. Cortese points out, the vital performance character of the code can be gradually lost, since specifications tend to receive more frequent reference than do performance standards. Pittsburgh's solution, the engineer states, is to issue provisional approval while a material is awaiting testing. However, there is still the case in which necessary basic criteria for testing are missing. "The trouble is," explains Frederick G. Frost, Jr. (of Frederick G. Frost, Jr., & Associates, the New York code's architectural consultant), "there has been no system for undertaking the basic research necessary to establish criteria for code writing. This is too large an undertaking for any one city, even New York. It is also too large for any single state. The job must be done by the Federal Government through the National Bureau of Standards." Further comments on national nonstatutory code standards come from
Prof. Schaffner. The code project chairman believes the "preponderance of modern thinking" supports a national model code with local requirements incorporated at the community level. Many of these local requirements have political overtones. In the New York City code undertaking, delicate jurisdictional problems arose because city construction is regulated by many agencies outside the Building Department. The situation was not easy to solve. However, the Brooklyn Poly team notes, the new code manages to centralize much currently dispersed authority under the Commissioner of Buildings, at present Charles G. Moerdler, and eliminates many instances of plural jurisdiction. These measures can hardly result in unanimous welcome for the proposed code. Nevertheless, the New York Times made the following remark in its strong editorial support for the code last month: "There was heated controversy over several features of the code, but what emerged is a consensus that has won amazingly broad approval." If, to this reported favor, the City Council adds legislative endorsement, a new generation of construction materials and engineering advances may penetrate New York's forbidding city limits.
Proposed NYC code allows new uses for basic materials PLASTICS
Plastic materials for drainage, vent systems, or exposed or accessible cold water; also plastics for windows, luminous ceilings, skylights, and other areas
COPPER
Types K and L copper tubing for water conveyance
CEMENT and CONCRETE
Prestressed and precast concrete (currently excluded from New York City); asbestos cement sewer pipe and concrete for outside drainage and house sewers
TILE
Tile drainage pipe for outside drainage and house sewers
CAST IRON
Service weight cast-iron soil pipe for drainage and vent piping
ALUMINUM
Wider use of structural aluminum
In addition—and perhaps most importantly—the individual architect or engineer could, under the new code, accept any new material for a specific project, if the material met code performance standards in tests. Final approval of the material would rest with the Building Department. Other new materials not introduced for a particular project but covered by performance standards in the code could be approved by the Building Department. Finally, new materials not covered by the code would remain under the jurisdiction of New York City's Board of Standards and Appeals.
NOV. 28, 1966 C&EN
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