ICC President, Cindy Davis, swears in the 2022/2023 Board of Directors (Todd Blevins not pictured)
WABO PRESIDENT’S REPORT - by Andy Higgins, MCP, CBO, ACO
Dear WABO membership:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you! It is my honor to represent you and I’ll do my best to listen to you, learn from you, and continue to support the significant work done by the members of this great organization.
We’re kicking off another exciting year for WABO! As is generally the case every even numbered year, we’ve made another orderly transition in our leadership. While the names/roles may have 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.” As your newly elected President, my focus will be to encourage each and every one of you to be actively engaged in the work of WABO, developing deep relationships with your peers in this great organization.
I would like to acknowledge and thank Cindy Davis, ICC Board President, for taking the time out of her busy schedule to join us in-person at this year’s WABO Annual Business Meeting in Bremerton, WA and for swearing in the new WABO Board of Directors. We heard a lot in her report about the future of ICC and the influence WABO has at local, state, and national levels. We are viewed as leaders in our profession and in my time as WABO President I intend to continue to work hard to enhance WABO’s position of influence. I ask for your help in being actively engaged in the effort! I want to hear from you how WABO can support your work, whether it’s in collectively developing the next iteration of the Washington State Custom Codes, establishing a new program to support Energy Code Compliance & Training, or taking the Code Official Accreditation Program to the next level with a 4th Year under development and work occurring in pursuit of WA State licensure, etc.
Because of all the hard work this organization takes on in service to our membership, it requires significant time and energy for the necessary collaboration to occur, and we all have limitations on both. That is exactly why we need you, the members, to be actively engaged. If you have not done so already, I encourage you to find an area where you have passion and join the appropriate committee(s). GET INVOLVED AND BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION. There are many ways to be involved—just ask one of the Officers or Committee Chairs what you can do to engage. 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—the more you actively engage, the deeper the relationships you will develop and the more this organization will give back to you… many times over!
Congratulations to Ray Cockerham (Puyallup) and Todd Blevins (West Richland), our newly elected 1st and 2nd Vice Presidents, respectively, and to our newest Executive Board members Max Booth (Clark County, Education); and Ryan Mumma (Bellevue, Emergency Management)! Congratulations also to re-elected Board members Angela Haupt (Kirkland, Finance); Brian Smith (Camas, Certification & Registration); Micah Chappell (Seattle, Technical Code Development); Tim Woodard (Blaine, Government Relations); Stacy Criswell (Monroe, Outreach); and James Tumelson (Edgewood, Code Official Accreditation Program). I look forward to working with all of you in this coming year to continue to advance WABO’s mission, message, and influence.
Thanks to all of you who ran for office this year. I appreciate your courage and your dedication to WABO, because you embody the spirit of being actively engaged that I aim to emphasize. I hope that each and every WABO member will consider running when the opportunity arises again next year (or the following…)! Until then, raise your hand and volunteer to join a committee. You won’t regret it…
Many thanks to Kurt Aldworth, who has served as our president for the past 2 “Virtual Years”, and now assumes the role of Immediate Past President. His service was recognized by WABO with a “Virtual Gavel” plaque and words of our sincere appreciation. I thank Kurt for his calm leadership under these unusual circumstances and for the wisdom with which he helped guide us through many challenges, as we navigated through the pandemic. I’m very glad he’ll be around to guide me in this new role too!
At this time, I also want to give special thanks to Gary Schenk, who finally gets to step down as a Past President on the Executive Board. Gary certainly has gone beyond the call of duty for length of service to the E-Board, and he’s served us extremely well, keeping WABO visible and influential at regional and national levels. However, even though he’s stepping away from the board, I have asked Gary to continuing representing WABO in our regional and national coalitions, including WPLBO. His insight is invaluable…
For those of you who weren’t at the meeting in Bremerton, you were missed! Besides the elections mentioned above, a lot happened—too much to recount here. Be sure to check out the 2022 ABM Recap and Committee Reports below for all the great activity and engaging work!
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. Please reach out to me if I can be of any assistance/service to you.
Our upcoming WABO Fall Business Meeting will be held in Spokane, WA October 27th and 28th.
I hope to see you there!
Sincerely,
~ Andy
2022 Code Officials of the Year - Stacy Criswell, Ted Corey, Ray Allshouse, Ryan Mumma, Hoyt Jeter (not pictured), Sue Coffman (not pictured), Quyen Thai, Dave Nakagawara (not pictured), Willie Hill, Ray Cockerham, Sheila Salerno (not pictured), Sean Carlstrom (not pictured), Jon Siu (not pictured), & Tim Woodard 2022 Associates of the Year - Tim Macke 2022 Outstanding Educational Achievement - Duane Jonlin (Micah Chappell accepted on Duane's behalf) 2022 Jurisdictional Outreach - City of Seattle, SDCI 2022 Outgoing President's Award - Kurt Aldworth
Committee Reports
Technical Code Development Committee - Chair Micah Chappell, MBA, CBO
Technical Code Development Committee (TCD) discussed the State Group 2 proposals and the upcoming public comment period for those changes. Please visit the SBCC website to view the proposed changes and provide a public comment in support of WABO’s proposals, since a significant portion of those were developed and submitted by WABO TCD.
WABO TCD is in the final stages of coordination with the WA State Fire Marshals Association and other jurisdictional representatives in a workgroup, that has been developing proposed changes, and public comments to the proposed changes, to the WUIC. If you have any recommended comments to the WUIC, please contact TCD Chair Micah Chappell.
Lastly, TCD discussed our upcoming participation and attendance at the ICC Public Comment Hearings in Louisville, KY. We are anticipating great attendance and look forward to further success at the Group B Public Comment Hearings.
WABO TCD will be developing another ICC Voting Guide shortly after the Public Comment Hearings with anticipated voting to start around the first week of October. Please be on the look out for that guide on the WABO Website.
As always, we encourage WABO members to get involved with TCD to provide continued improvement to our State and National Codes.
Joint Certification & Registration / Outreach Committee - Chair Brian Smith, CBO, ACO & Stacy Criswell CBO, ACO
With energy code requirements that are becoming more and more complicated, WABO continues to pursue the idea of adding a residential and commercial Washington State energy code plans examiner certification to our program. This involves many partners as you can imagine, however we are making great progress on developing training, test questions and processes for individuals to get approved to look at these systems.
During the joint C & R/Outreach committee meeting at the Summer ABM in Bremerton, we reviewed and discussed the 2nd draft proposal from Evergreen Technology Consulting (ETC) to develop the commercial portion of the energy code plan review training and certification standard. The 2nd draft proposal will increase costs to WABO but the program will be solely developed based on the 2021 Washington Energy Code. The previous draft proposal we received from ETC initially based the foundation of the training and certification off the national ICC Energy Code which is significantly different than what the State of Washington looks to be adopting next code cycle. Overall, the joint C & R/Outreach committee members felt it was important to keep the project moving forward.
Later during the afternoon Energy Code Task Force - update during the business meeting, the membership also agreed that it was important to keep the project moving forward. Our hope is that once this system is in place, jurisdictions may choose to allow the energy code portions of future submittals to be pre-reviewed by these qualified individuals which will save everyone time and provide a consistent review across our state. Again, this is designed to be an option for jurisdictions to use, and not a requirement, but many of our members have asked for something to be done and this was our best option.
Please stay tuned for more information. If you are interested in joining the program development sub-committee, please contact the WABO office.
Government Relations - Chair Tim Woodard
The Government Relations committee (GRC) met at the Summer 2022 Annual Business Meeting and many topics were discussed.
- Our lobbyist Marian Dacca reviewed the make-up of the current legislature. She shared results from preliminary polling; however, will be able to report more after the primaries.
- Discussion included a recap of bills we expect to come back this year including a bill funding local jurisdictions to upgrade technology or bring on additional help if timelines are agreed to.
- We began the process of reviewing our official positions and hope to codify those at the fall meeting.
Finance Committee - Chair Angela Haupt, CBO
Angela provided the membership with an overview of WABO's 2021/2022 year end financials.
Accreditation Committee - Chair James Tumelson, MCP, CBO, ME, ACO
The Code Official Accreditation Program (COAP) will have, for the first time, two separate instructors to teach the first year. This effort is to combat attrition within the program and the large demand for this first year. All three years are effectively being taught concurrently and students have the option of enrollment into years one and two simultaneously.
The committee has completed a developing a curriculum (DACUM) process. This effort was to identify learning objectives from multiple industry professionals and code officials. The creation of this fourth year in the COAP is solely focused on the role of a Building Official. The committee has also begun the development of a 12 module self-paced program to educate code officials that are interested in additional specialized training.
The Accreditation Committee would ask that you consider joining your peers as an Accredited Code Official (ACO) and/or enroll in the COAP. If interested in the COAP, we would urge you to enroll in the program now, as space is limited and classes are starting this fall September 12th, 2022.
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