Page 66 - Green Builder November Issue Codes Update

FROM THE TAILGATE By Ron Jones

New Offerings for the Sustainable Minded

Real Builders Respect Building Codes

When people rail against building codes and regulation, it’s often a smoke screen

for acceptance of the lowest common denominator.
IF ONE WERE TO LISTEN only to the endless railings
of the building industry voices against every form
of regulation—but most especially any proposed
increases in energy performance requirements
and the attendant adoption of codes and standards

that are developed to implement and enforce those

enhancements—it might be easy to assume that the

loud and stubborn opposition on the part of industry

practitioners is universal. My experience tells me that

nothing could be further from the truth.

Advocacy groups and special interest trade

associations have much more at stake than just the

concerns of their constituents. In the end, the most

effective way for them to justify their own existence,

and to validate the continuation of their lucrative

operations, is to convince their target audiences that

they need their protection, to perpetuate the notion of

persecution, to promote the fear of change and to decry

what they describe as the needless interference in

their businesses by those regulators and enforcement

officials who they portray as meddling adversaries.

In many cases, this is not a difficult sell. I have had

more than one irate builder declare to me that they

“just don’t like being told what to do!” My consistent

response is that he or she needs to get over it. We

all are required to follow rules and regulations that

have been deemed to serve not only our own safety

and well-being, but also the common good. One can’t

help but wonder if such a position is little more than

a smoke screen to excuse the acceptance of the lowest common glad to have the backstop of the body of knowledge and experience

denominator. on which the rules are predicated.

More often, however, builders have confided in me that while they Those who oppose requirements aimed at helping the building

do sometimes find regulations, codes and standards burdensome and industry to improve the results of our collective labors would have

annoying, they nevertheless appreciate the consistency, predictability listeners believe that they speak for all of us, that they have the best

and technical guidance they provide. They also point to codes and regs interests of those who live work and play in the built environment

as the baseline that provides the perfect metric against which they as their top priority, and that “affordability” can be legitimately

can contrast their commitment to superior results and performance substituted for “profitability” in their arguments against improved

in their projects versus those who are satisfied to deliver only the results. The shrill voices of opposition may be impossible to ignore,

bare minimum. I have never talked with a builder who claimed to but they do not represent the whole of the industry, despite their

know everything there is to know about building. Rather, they are efforts to convince us otherwise. GB

64 GREEN BUILDER November/December 2016 www.greenbuildermedia.com