World standards paper competition announced

This year, World Standards Week will be celebrated from Nov. 4–8, 2019. As part of a long-term effort to spread awareness among post-secondary students of the strategic significance of standards and conformance, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) announced its eighth annual student competition. The 2019 challenge asks participants to submit papers that answer the question, “How do standards help mitigate disaster?” The paper competition — with an April 30, 2019, deadline — is open to students enrolled full- or part-time in associate, undergraduate or graduate programs during the period of September 2018 to April 2019 in U.S. higher education institutions. The winning papers will be announced in June 2019. Click here to view and download the competition flyer.

This year’s ANSI paper competition theme is very relevant to the International Code Council and its work toward demonstrating the importance of regular updates to the building codes and strong code enforcement in order to mitigate damage from natural disasters. The Code Council initiated the process to update the ICC 500 Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters and the ICC 802 Standard for Irrigation Emission Devices in September 2018. Additionally, the National Institute of Building Sciences recently released the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves: 2018 Interim Report. The study found that adopting the 2018 International Codes — the most widely used and adopted set of building safety codes in the world — generates a national benefit of $11 for every $1 invested. It also found that the national mitigation benefit-cost ratio associated with code adoption is $6 to $1 for floods, $10 to $1 for hurricanes and $12 to $1 for earthquakes, with benefits coming through avoided casualties, post-traumatic stress, property damage, business interruptions and insurance premiums. These results show that all building stakeholders benefit from implementing mitigation strategies in regularly updated codes — from developers, titleholders and lenders, to tenants and communities.

An active participant in the international standards community, the Code Council supports standardization activity for established fields and emerging new technologies, is a member of the the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is an ANSI-accredited standards developer, and proudly supports World Standards Week and World Standards Day each year.

During ANSI’s 3rd annual Standards Negotiation Simulation Competition — held on Oct. 15, 2018, during World Standards Week in Washington, D.C. — Government Relations Senior Vice President Sara Yerkes served as a judge representing the Code Council, which also proudly sponsored the event. The competition provided insight to undergraduate and graduate students into the process of developing an international standard.

Students representing five universities and college teams from across the U.S. — City College of New York, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Tampa, University of Virginia, and University of Maryland — put their standards negotiation skills to the test. The simulation was an opportunity for the students to partake in standardization development— a process which may typically take months and multiple meetings. The exercise helped condense standardization development into just a few hours, with the support of collaborative briefings, and mentors on-hand to coach the students. The winning students were chosen for their skills in strategy, collaboration and negotiation, and ultimately, their ability to achieve their main objective in their standardization development role. The student team from the University of Virginia was elected as the winner by a group of judges from ASTM International, Underwriters Laboratories, San Jose State, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, the International Code Council, and ANSI staff.