WABO 2014 Annual Business Meeting

WABO members gather in Ocean Shores

Rep. Dean Takko

President's Report - Jon Siu

It is a new year for WABO, and we’ve made another orderly transition in our leadership.  However, while the leadership has changed, the general direction of WABO will not—our activities will continue to be focused on our mission, “Leading the Way to Excellence in Building and Life Safety.”  However, I intend to emphasize your involvement in WABO.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you.  As I said in accepting the honor of serving you, in electing me as your president, you didn’t elect a “rah-rah” person, or a great speechmaker.  (After all, I am an engineer!)  But you did elect a hard worker, and I’ll do my best to represent and support you, the members of this great organization.

We heard a lot at Ocean Shores from the ICC representatives and in other reports about the influence WABO has at local, state, and national levels of our profession.  We are viewed as leaders, and have become the go-to organization on issues relating to codes and code administration.  I intend to at least maintain, but if at all possible, strengthen WABO’s position as leaders.

I want our message to be that we are willing to work with anyone in a collaborative way (as long as it is consistent with our mission, of course).  We may not agree on everything, but let’s find the common ground—things we can agree on and move forward.  I think our goal should be that our stakeholders know we listen to their concerns, and that while we may ultimately say “no,” they feel they’ve been heard, and have been treated fairly.  And isn’t that what we expect of ourselves and our staff in our daily lives as building officials?

From the president/Executive Board viewpoint, I want to know how better to collaborate with you, the members of WABO.  I want to hear how WABO can support your work, whether it’s in developing a new special inspection registration program for firestopping, or hearing whether or not the WABO bookstore has outlived its usefulness.

On the flip side, all this collaboration takes time and energy, and we all have limitations on both.  We need you, the members, to be involved.  I encourage you to find an area where you have a passion, and join the appropriate committee.  BE ACTIVE.  BE AN INFLUENCE.  BE INVOLVED.  Just to mention one place, if you have a passion for emergency management and responding to natural disasters, there is a great need on the Emergency Management Committee for your participation.  There are many other ways to be involved—just ask one of the Committee chairs what you can do.

We pride ourselves on being a membership-driven organization.  That means the leadership is obligated to listen to you.  It also means you have an obligation to be involved—you can’t sit back and be passive.

Congratulations to Tom Phillips (Kirkland) and Ray Allshouse (Shoreline), our new First and Second Vice Presidents, respectively, and new Executive Board members Kurt Aldworth (Sammamish, Finance Committee) and Doug Powell (Spokane Valley, Emergency Management Committee)!  Congratulations also to re-elected Board members Pete Rambow (Tacoma, Certification & Registration), Lee Kranz (Bellevue, Technical Code Development), Gary Allsup (Lacey, Government Relations), Tim Nordtvedt (Mill Creek, Outreach), and Mike Noot (Pierce County, Education).  Thanks to Andy Higgins (Seattle), for his continued dedication to leading the WABO Apprenticeship Program.  I look forward to working with all of you in this coming year to continue to advance WABO’s mission and message. 

Thanks also to those of you who ran for office, but were unsuccessful.  I appreciate your courage and your dedication to WABO, because you embody the spirit of getting involved I want to emphasize.  I hope you’ll consider running again when the opportunity arises.

Thanks go to Trace Justice, who has served as our president for 2-½ years, and now assumes the role of Immediate Past President.  His service was recognized by ICC with a plaque and words of appreciation from Cash Olzowy (Lexington Fayette Urban County, Kentucky; ICC Secretary/Treasurer).  I appreciate Trace’s calm and grace under pressure, and the wisdom with which he helped us navigate through many challenges, such as the code cycle legislation which resulted in the resolution WABO submitted to the ICC membership for consideration.  I’m very glad he’ll be around to guide me in this new role.

At this time, I also want to give special thanks to Gary Schenk, who finally gets to step down as Immediate Past President.  He’s certainly gone beyond the call of duty for length of service in that position, and he’s served us well, keeping WABO visible and influential at regional and national levels.  However, even though he’s dropped the “Immediate” part of his title, I expect he will be continuing to represent us in our regional and national coalitions, such as WPLBO and IABO.

For those of you who weren’t at the meeting in Ocean Shores, you were missed.  Besides the elections mentioned above, a lot happened—too much to recount here.  The highlights:

• State Representative Dean Takko (19th District, Chair of House Local Government Committee) joined us for the Government Relations Committee meeting, as well as served as our keynote speaker during lunch.  He gave us some very valuable guidance on how to approach the bills we want to submit to the Legislature in the next session.  Thanks to Representative Takko for taking time out of his busy schedule to spend a few hours with us.

• Alex “Cash” Olzowy, Jim Brown (Gillette, Wyoming; Director), Mark Johnson (Executive Vice President and Director, ICC Business Development), and Kraig Stevenson (Senior Regional Manager) were there to represent ICC.  The WABO Board and many members had good discussions with them on many topics, including the WABO resolution.  Thanks to them for coming and spending over two days with us!

• ICC responded to the WABO resolution by putting together a roundtable meeting to be held in Washington, DC in August to discuss the issues surrounding the code development cycle and code adoptions.  Gary Schenk will likely represent WABO at the meeting.  If you have thoughts on the issue, please let him know what they are, so he can represent us accurately.

• Kurt Latimore presented the professional development program, “Implementing Best Practices for Local Government Permitting,” looking at how various jurisdictions around the state have implemented process improvements to improve the permitting process.

• With some guidance from Representative Takko, the membership at the meeting voted to put forward the same Apprenticeship Program funding bill WABO forwarded last year.  However, it was made very clear to us that the WABO membership needed to work with all the stakeholders (Association of Washington Cities, Washington State Association of Counties, BIAW, etc.) to address their issues and smooth the path to adoption.  Get involved to help move this important piece of legislation.

• In the code development arena, I encourage you to poke around in ICC’s cdpACCESS system, which allows you to submit code changes, public comments, and vote online.  While I know many of you are not interested in the IgCC process currently underway, it will serve as preparation and practice for the upcoming (2015) Group A cycle, which will cover an alphabet soup of the 2018 I-codes: IBC, IEBC, IFGC, IMC, IPC, IPMC, IPSDC, IRC (mechanical and plumbing), ISPSC, and IZC.  This is your chance to get involved in the national code development process.

I want to thank you again for the confidence you have placed in me.  I’ll do my best not to abuse that confidence, and to serve you well. 

Our next WABO meeting will be in Yakima, October 16 and 17.  I hope to see you there!

Regards,

Jon

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2014 Award Winners - With President Trace Justice

Committee Reports

Technical Code Committee (TCD) - Chair Lee Kranz

At the TCD meeting held in Ocean Shores on June 27th, there was discussion on the dialog that took place in Memphis at the Committee Action Hearings related to the future of the IGCC and the report of the Sustainability Membership Council. Approximately 50 ICC members attended the meeting.  Jon Siu represented WABO TCD and expressed our concerns about viability of the IGCC and how to improve adoption rates. 

*             IGCC provisions may be proposed to SBCC as mandatory or appendix provisions.  The TAG will be reviewing the 2015 IGCC in the future to consider options for adoption.

*             WABO members would like training on code development and on cdpACCESS.  Lee will follow up with ICC and other possible resources to see what options are available for professional development.

*             Accessibility scoping.  Rick Lupton, City of Seattle, represents WABO on the A117.1 committee.  He informed Lee of a proposal to move accessibility scoping provisions from the IBC to A117.1.  TCD members did not  support this change.  A motion was approved to write a WABO TCD position paper in opposition to the proposed change to give to Rick L.

*             Elevator Code.  Jack Day, L & I Elevator Division, asked TCD to collaborate with him on elevator issues.  He has compiled a spreadsheet of Building Code references in ASME A17.1, and is working on a similar spreadsheet for the Building Code references to A17.1.  Tim Nogler volunteered to chair a committee to work on code change proposals to coordinate A17.1 and the Building Code, and to work on other code interpretation issues between L & I and local jurisdictions.  Tim will initiate regular meetings with Jack.  Maureen and Lee volunteered for the committee.  Anyone else who is interested is invited to join.

*             Currently, the primary focus of TCD is related to development of public comments for the 2015 IGCC.

*             TCD will begin discussion of Group A code development opportunities this fall.  Group A includes IBC - Egress, IBC - Fire Safety, IBC - General, IEBC, IFGC, IMC, IPC, IPMC, IPSDC, IRC - Mechanical, IRC - Plumbing, ISPSC,  IZC code development. 

WABO Technical Code Development meets Monday, July 7th and then again on July 14th from 1 to 4 PM to discuss Group C (IGCC) public comments.  The deadline to submit public comments for the IGCC is July 16. There are 2 meetings (7/7 & 7/14) before the July 16 deadline.  

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Education Committee - Chair Mike Noot

Thank you for electing me your Chairperson.  I appreciate the opportunity to lead discussions about filling our educational needs.

The Annual Education Institute (AEI) venue is set. It will be in the SeaTac area again. We discussed potential classes in this last year of the current code cycle.  Some departments are staffing back up and new staff will need to be brought up to speed on current codes.

You may see the following topics: Hoods & spray booths, UPC, Marijuana in the Building Code, Soft skills – dealing with customers, IEBC, IPMC, 2014 NEC, ATC20 etal,  NIMS, Intro to IRC, Grey water & rain water systems. Send other suggestions to Mike Noot [email protected] or Julie Rogers [email protected].

ICC Director of Business Development; Mark Johnson & ICC Secretary/Treasurer;  Alex ‘Cash’ Olszowy III spoke about the ICC plan to register “Preferred Provider” to deliver CEUs. It sounds like there will be little change to existing delivery of CEUs by ICC Chapters except that eventually up to ½ of the CEUs can be by other than preferred providers. Many of the current trainers will become preferred providers and others may apply to be. Details still need to be worked out.

The Code Official Apprentice Program (COAP) is moving forward with development of the year one curriculum with the South Seattle Community College and seeking grants and other funding sources to help maintain the program. The Education Committee will have a roll in providing a portion of the educational needs of the apprentices. WABO members will be sought to become instructors for target subjects in which they have expertise. A “Train The Trainer” boot camp is being scheduled to make sure instructors know the proper mechanisms for accredited course work.

Chris Van Daalen with Code Innovations Database, www.codeinnovations.org was our guest and briefed us on the earth friendly materials database his organization is providing. He is available to speak in your community about their program and can provide small desktop kiosks for your permit center.

Be thinking of how you can introduce the codes & their administration in your local schools. Let’s put a plan together and get kids thinking of codes administration or understanding codes as an integral part of the construction process. More work to come.

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