Leadership spotlight: William Bryant

The International Code Council Board of Directors are responsible for steering the association and its family of solutions towards a sustainable future while adhering to the stated mission of building safety. To carry out this charge, the board meets multiple times a year to provide oversight and strategic direction, ensure adequate financial and program resources, and oversee and evaluate the chief executive officer.

The board is comprised of four officers, eight at-large directors and six sectional directors who all serve the interests of code professionals in the building safety industry through advocacy, education and research. They act as the voice of the association’s 64,000 members across the country and around the world.

“We are very grateful to have a board of directors with such extensive expertise in the building safety industry,” said International Code Council Chief Executive Officer Dominic Sims, CBO. “These officers and directors volunteer their time to make our buildings safer and our communities more resilient. We thank them for their leadership.”

Immediate Past President
William R. Bryant, MCP, CBO
Assistant Director of Inspections and Permits
Department of Inspections and Permits
Anne Arundel County, Maryland

After a few years of observing code development from the industry point of view, William Bryant thought it might be time to try the regulatory angle. By that time, he already had taught construction technology at the high-school level and was overseeing all phases of product design for a major commercial modular manufacturer, a job that required him to work on compliance with building codes throughout a 15-state region.

“I thought, ‘If I can do it on one side of the fence, I can do it on the other,’” said Bryant, who was elected an International Code Council director-at-large during the 2012 Annual Conference in Portland, Ore. He was elected president of the Code Council board at the 2018 Annual Conference in Richmond, Va.

When he applied for the position of plan reviewer for Anne Arundel County, Md., in 1989, it started him on a lifelong mission to create an atmosphere of cooperation and common sense with one goal in mind: keeping people safe. Today, he is the assistant director of inspections and permits for Anne Arundel County.

Bryant helped to shape the consolidation of the three model code groups that resulted in the Code Council. He was serving on the Building Officials and Code Administrators International (BOCA) Board of Directors during the late 1990s, when he was named as one of the Code Council’s first board members.

Bryant remembers the move toward the consolidation as “painful at times. We all knew what the end result was supposed to be. We had to just keep our eyes on that as we trudged along. Each organization had its own way of doing things. There were so many compromises. There also was a lot of thought that went into each decision and a lot of gut feeling. But I think we came up with something pretty special.”

He said he ran for election to the Code Council board for the same reason he got into the business in the first place: He saw a need to find a way to make the codes even better so people can be safer.

“These are really challenging times,” Bryant said. “There is a great need for some clear thinking. We need to revitalize the membership. We have to find out what they want, what they need. We may not be able to give them everything, but we can at least give them an answer.”

The economy has hurt the construction industry and the regulatory industry as well, Bryant said. He remembered bringing co-workers with him to code hearings, “and they loved it. They ask if we can go back. And I have to tell them no, there’s no money.”

“We are seeing fewer and fewer people at the code hearings. But when we got the new cdpACCESS going, everybody is on the same level playing field. Leading up to the votes, they will see all the documentations and arguments. And then they will be able to vote from wherever they are.”

“Now, we have people who just buy the code books every three years. But with cdpACCESS, they will have the opportunity to get more involved. They won’t be able to say, ‘How did that get in the code?’”

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Code hearings often seem to be where building officials and others in the industry discover the fire in their belly that will drive them in their careers. Bryant was no different. Working for a modular manufacturer, he often attended code hearings in various states and for the various legacy organizations.

While he was working for Anne Arundel County, Bryant was mentored by Paul Radaskus, then director of inspections and permits for Anne Arundel County and a BOCA Board Director. Radaskus demanded all management members of the department get involved with the code development process and become a member of a committee. Bryant took those words of advice seriously. Several years later, he was approached by then-BOCA Board President Paul Myers, who would become the Code Council’s first board president.

“He said he had seen me at some of the code hearings and on committees,” Bryant remembered. “He liked my passion, my leadership and technical expertise. He said, ‘I think you need to run for the BOCA board.’ Already, some some officials told me that if I wanted to grow professionally, being involved in BOCA or another such organization was the way to go.”

So Bryant, who also served as the president of the Maryland Building Officials Association, was elected to the BOCA board. After he helped guide the Code Council, as he says, through the “trials and tribulations” of the consolidation, he became one of the Code Council’s first dozen certified Master Code Professionals.

Bryant wants to have that kind of effect on younger people in the industry. “You don’t see the younger people at code hearings,” he said. “You only see the core group. But with cdpACCESS, we will have the capability to reach out to them on their level through social media.”

Ironically, helping his son earn a Boy Scout Eagle designation years ago rekindled a passion he had put aside for many years: scuba diving. Now, he’ll dive around Florida for fun, or maybe up the coast a bit closer to home.

Out of the water, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Sherri, and his son and daughter, as well as fishing, hunting, shooting and his true passion: year-round barbecuing.

“I am a barbecue aficionado,” Bryant says with a smile. “When we had those big snows a few years ago, I dug a trench to the grill and around it to keep going all year. A guy has to eat, after all.”