SDCI is once again recognizing the International Code Council’s Building Safety Month for 2022. Building Safety Month is an international educational campaign celebrated in May every year to raise awareness about building safety. The campaign reinforces the need for adoption of 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 2022. Also, on May 9, 2022, Mayor Harrell proclaimed that May is Building Safety Month in Seattle. Building Safety Month is an international educational campaign celebrated in May every year to raise awareness about building safety. The campaign reinforces the need for adoption of modern, regularly updated technical building codes, and helps individuals, families, and businesses understand what it takes to create safe and sustainable structures.
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 through proclamations, informational events, legislative briefings, and more. We come together to 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 their 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 official’s work to keep the public safe day in and day out.
For the last 42 years, we have celebrated advances in constructing safe, sustainable, affordable, and resilient buildings and homes. The ongoing support of Building Safety Month and the important role code officials play in public safety in the built environment has come from U.S. presidents, governors, mayors, county executives, other government officials, and construction industry professionals. With weekly themes – planning a safe and sustainable tomorrow, exploring careers in building safety, understanding the four phases of emergency management, and creating a safe and abundant water supply– Building Safety Month 2022 is addressing crucial topics that are currently top-of-mind for society. After all, our buildings – whether commercial or residential – are continuing to experience an evolution as our needs evolve. Building codes and standards continue to 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 use. Through legislative efforts inspired by visionary leadership efforts, we continue to raise the bar and set the standards for future code development processes.
SDCI members are recognized around the country for active participation in those processes and for coaching regarding our best practices. We continue to introduce our employees to an effort of participation in the process of code development by supporting them in local ICC chapter membership. These memberships are open to all with special opportunities to those individuals that perform the work in the department. 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 continues to be an important commodity within our region as our needs increase and availability is stretched to limits. Our utilities work in harmony with SDCI to provide reasonable solutions to important conservation efforts. Our department is even more involved with the adoption of the new stormwater code featuring on-site stormwater management principles. These are extremely important considerations to prevent as much run-off out of our streams and rivers that are the habitat of our Salmon population.
SDCI leadership and staff continue to lead the city and the region in disaster preparedness. The participation in training of groups outside of the city by our inspectors and the engineering studies of unreinforced masonry buildings our department has undertaken by staff engineers shows our commitment to sustainability and survivability in the case of an unlikely event. Our continued outreach to the community by means of our annual SDCI Home Fairs, are welcomed, and continue to grow, even in a virtual environment.
With the challenges of a pandemic nearly behind us, lessons of collaboration as well as using innovation in partnerships with groups like the International Code Council will make our department stronger. Find the time to join the ranks of a local ICC chapter and find out how the commonality of likeminded persons and benefits of networking may have in store for you. For more information, visit the ICC’s Building Safety Month website and follow SDCI on Twitter and Facebook.