SDCI is once again recognizing the International Code Council’s Building Safety Month for 2021. Building Safety Month is an international educational campaign celebrated in May every year to raise awareness about building safety. The campaign reinforces the need to adopt modern, regularly updated technical building codes, and helps individuals, families, and businesses understand what it takes to create safe and sustainable structures. 
SDCI is once again recognizing the International Code Council’s Building Safety Month for 2021. Building Safety Month is an international educational campaign celebrated in May every year to raise awareness about building safety. The campaign reinforces the need to adopt modern, regularly updated technical building codes, and helps individuals, families, and businesses understand what it takes to create safe and sustainable structures.
During Building Safety Month the International Code Council, its 64,000 members, and a diverse partnership of professionals from the building construction, design, and safety communities come together with corporations, government agencies, professional associations, and nonprofits to promote building safety. Such promotions include proclamations, informational events, legislative briefings, and more. We support Building Safety Month because we understand the need for safe and sustainable structures where we live, work, and play.
All communities need building codes to protect residents from disasters like fires, earthquakes, weather-related events, and structural collapse. Building codes are society’s best way of protecting homes, offices, schools, manufacturing facilities, retail, and entertainment venues. Code officials work daily to keep the public safe.
For the last 41 years, we have celebrated advances in constructing safe, sustainable, affordable, and resilient buildings and homes. Building Safety Month 2021 addresses crucial topics that are currently top-of-mind for society. This year’s weekly themes include energy and innovation, training the next generation, water safety, and disaster preparedness. After all, our buildings – whether commercial or residential – continually evolve as our needs evolve. Our building codes and standards play a pivotal role in meeting these new demands.
The City of Seattle, Washington State, and the Pacific Northwest as a region, continue to lead the nation with innovative initiatives around climate change, reduction of carbon-based heating sources, and reduction of energy usage. Through legislative efforts, we continue to raise the bar and set the standards for future code development processes.
SDCI’s staff are recognized around the country for active participation in code development processes and for coaching others on our best practices. We support our staff’s membership in the local International Code Council chapter. The efforts we put in place now to train our next generation will benefit society plus maintain an equitable and inclusive investment in our department’s future.
Water is an important commodity within our region as our needs increase and availability is stretched to the limits. Our utilities work with SDCI to provide reasonable solutions to important conservation efforts. We are very involved in the adoption of the new stormwater code featuring on-site storm water management principles. These are extremely important considerations to prevent as run-off that can harm the salmon habitat in our streams and rivers.
SDCI is a leader in the city and the region in disaster preparedness. Our inspectors regularly train groups outside of the city to respond to disasters. Our staff has conducted engineering studies of unreinforced masonry buildings to help increase sustainability and survivability in the case of an unlikely event.
For more information about Building Safety Month, please visit the International Code Council’s website.