Final stage of Chicago’s construction codes modernization underway

Under the leadership of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Building Commissioner Matthew Beaudet, the city of Chicago has entered into the third and final phase of its ambitious multi-year effort to modernize its construction codes using the International Code Council’s International Codes (I-Codes) as the basis for many of its key provisions, including new building construction, rehab of existing buildings, energy conservation, plumbing, mechanical and fuel gas.

When the code revision and adoption process is completed — hopefully in 2023, depending on the trajectory of the COVID pandemic — it will mark the end of a bold effort to comprehensively revise the city’s construction code for the first time in 70 years. The project, which began in 2015, involved hundreds of volunteer experts and industry leaders, many city agencies, the mayor’s office, and codes and standards organizations, including the Code Council.

Interim amendments to Chicago’s plumbing and mechanical codes are passed

“Phase three was supposed to start [in 2020], but the world had other plans,” said Grant Ullrich, managing deputy commissioner of the city of Chicago’s Department of Buildings. “Throughout the COVID pandemic, we were able to continue the code review process through virtual conversations using Teams and Zoom, but for certain consensus-building activities a virtual meeting is not a perfect substitute.”

As a temporary workaround, in late 2021 the Chicago City Council passed packages of interim amendments to the city’s plumbing and mechanical codes that provided interim fixes to unresolved issues until the city is able to convene in-person advisory group meetings again safely.

Chicago’s plumbing code was rooted in the IPC

“The mechanical code is definitely on deck for 2022,” Ullrich said. The city’s plumbing code was already rooted in the International Plumbing Code (IPC) dating back to the IPC’s first edition. Last year, as part of the ambitious modernization of its building and safety codes, the city updated several sections based on the 2021 IPC. Work is ongoing as the city continues to modernize its building regulations based on the I-Codes. “We’re also going to see what our bandwidth is for getting to a comprehensive plumbing package this year,” Ullrich continued. “Either way, the interim amendments address a number of topics that we’ll be able to build on when we resume the consensus process.”

The amendments to the mechanical code, which the city council passed in mid-September last year, included provisions for:

• Standardizing the methods for accepting listed, labeled and approved heating, ventilation and air-conditioning appliances;
• Adopting national standards for energy-efficient condensing clothes dryers in residential installations;
• Updating the requirements for domestic cooking appliance exhausts;
• Recognizing ventilation systems with energy recovery capabilities;
• Updating the list of recognized refrigerants and the requirements for refrigerant piping; and
• Streamlining the trade licensing requirements for industrial machinery engineers.

A month later, the city council passed a similar ordinance that amended the city’s plumbing code with provisions for:

• Allowing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) drainpipes to be used in low- and mid-rise residential buildings as well as in the residential portion of low- and mid-rise mixed-use buildings;
• Allowing optional multi-stall all-gender restrooms and requiring gender-neutral signage in single-user restrooms;
• Reducing toilet requirements for small storefront businesses and restaurants with no more than 30 occupants;
• Clarifying the requirements for water-conserving plumbing fixtures in residential and commercial buildings;
• Bringing the requirements for grease protection in sewer systems in line with national standards;
• Aligning public swimming pools requirements with state Department of Public Health regulations;
• Streamlining the administration of drainlayer licenses; and
• Expanding the eligibility for certain permit-fee waivers to include small nonprofit organizations including churches.

The decision to permit the use of PVC drainpipes was based on the results of a four-year study that found that residential building operators could save an average of 44 percent of their plumbing costs by switching their drainpipes to PVC, with some study participants reporting savings as high as 75 percent.

The barriers to modernizing Chicago’s construction codes

Ullrich has been involved with the “Modernizing Chicago’s Construction Codes” initiative since nearly the beginning; he joined the Department of Buildings in 2016, shortly after Building Commissioner Judy Frydland launched the multi-year code realignment effort. In that time, he has seen how stakeholders have gradually evolved and adapted their approaches in order to find consensus.

“Everyone comes to the table with their own point of view and their own wish lists of things they’d like to see changed and things they’d like to see stay the same,” Ullrich said. “You start by trying to get groups that may have very different viewpoints to listen to and appreciate one another. We’ve been working on that for a while, and we continue to work on it.”

Sometimes, however, internal barriers prove to be more challenging to overcome than external ones, Ullrich said. “It can be hard to overcome institutional inertia and pull together all of the right resources in a large government organization,” he said. “There are a lot of pieces in terms of lining up IT, financing and budgeting, for example, and making sure that if you start a big project like this, that there will be continuity and resources throughout its lifetime. It’s not just about adopting a code, it’s also about implementing it successfully in terms of system updates, forms and paperwork, and employee training. And I think we have been successful in that regard too.”

The worldwide COVID pandemic proved to be something of a stress test for Chicago’s new construction codes and everyone responsible for applying and following them. COVID hit just a few months before the new codes — based on the 2018 International Building Code and related model construction codes published by the International Code Council — were scheduled to become mandatory for all permit applications. Rather than push back the date, however, Mayor Lightfoot and the Department of Buildings were confident that they could stick to the original schedule.

“The pandemic showed the resilience of the framework we had built for adopting phase two,” Ullrich said. “There were people who, at the beginning of the pandemic in February and March [2020], said that we should put off the transition deadline, which was coming up in August. But we looked very closely at the timeline and decided that we would stay on schedule. And while the pandemic did cause some bumps along the way, people were able to continue to operate within the framework that we had always envisioned for the transition.”

Ullrich said the city and end-users are already beginning to reap the benefits from the new codes adopted in phases one and two, such as new energy-saving technologies for use in electrical systems and elevators, energy-efficient lighting, and provisions for rehab work in existing buildings.

“Another big change for Chicago was allowing some more small- and mid-scale wood-frame construction,” Ullrich said. “You can now construct four-story residential buildings in wood-frame construction in most cases, and that offers big savings. With all of the supply chain issues associated with the pandemic, opening up the code so that it was not as prescriptive in terms of materials provided developers with more choices and allowed them to more easily respond to changes in the supply chain and material pricing. And as we start seeing material prices come back down to normal, I think that’s only going get stronger.”

The path toward implementation of Chicago’s updated building codes

Basing Chicago’s building codes on model codes also helps reduce training costs and improves compliance with state codes, Ullrich noted.

Chicago will be receiving a $214,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency over two years to help with code implementation,  internal and external training, and beginning the first update cycle for Chicago’s new I-Code-based codes in 2024. Ullrich credits the International Code Council for raising awareness in the U.S. Congress, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state governments around the country of the importance of code modernization for improving resilience to the effects of natural disasters.

“We have been successful in this undertaking because we were able to bring all the different interest groups together, listen to their viewpoints and find a way not only to work with them but also for them to work with each other,” Ullrich said. “In Chicago, we take pride in our ability to work with people really well.”