Salt Lake City adopted the nation’s first two consensus standards that address offsite construction last March, six months in advance of their publication by the International Code Council and the Modular Building Institute. Though ICC and MBI expect other jurisdictions to follow suit, to date there have been no other takers.
“We are in conversations with multiple state agencies that are strongly considering it,” says Tom Hardiman, MBI’s executive director and vice chair of the single committee that produced the aligned documents: ICC/MBI 1200-2021 Standard for Off-Site Construction: Planning, Design, Fabrication and Assembly and ICC/MBI 1205-2021 Standard for Off-Site Construction: Inspection and Regulatory Compliance.
标准代表了MBI的飞跃。哈迪曼说：“仅仅拥有标准化的定义是一件大事。”他补充说：“术语到处都是。”
In the standards, offsite construction is defined as a modular building, component or panelized system designed and constructed “in compliance with this standard” and “wholly or in substantial part” fabricated or assembled in manufacturing plants for installation—or assembly and installation—on a separate building site. The offsite project “has been manufactured in such a manner that all parts or processes cannot be inspected at the installation site without disassembly, damage to, or destruction thereof.”
其目的是使一致性站外项目s—for manufacturers, building teams and regulators. The standards, which are complementary, also are part of an effort to lower barriers to trade for offsite products, which often have to navigate a patchwork of regional regulations.
ICC创新副总裁Ryan Colker说，这部分是因为标准为工厂提供了第三方检查的途径，在完成隐藏结构，布线，管道和管道之前。这很重要，因为建筑官员通常无权在其管辖范围之外旅行。
Until the city council adopted the standards, that was the situation in Salt Lake City. A modular builder outside the city wanted to sell accessory dwelling units, typically sited in backyards, to city homeowners. The modular ADUs were not allowed by code because they were not regulated by the city, says Orion Goff, Salt Lake City’s deputy director of community and neighborhoods and former building official.
A major motivator for the standards is that the 35 states that regulate modular construction have slightly different requirements for design review and approval, permitting and inspection. The same is true for jurisdictions that regulate modular projects using codes written for onsite construction.
That’s a big problem for building teams, says David R. Tompos, a 50-year veteran of modular construction who chaired the standards’ committee. It makes it difficult for manufacturers of modular units to ship to sites outside their jurisdictions and cumbersome for building teams that work in many jurisdictions because they have to follow different requirements for submittals, quality-control manuals and inspection, he says.
The situation “wastes a lot of time” and causes unnecessary expense, adds Tompos, director of marketing for ICC NTA, a third-party inspection service for offsite projects, owned by ICC.
尽管每个司法管辖区都可能具有自己的标准附录，但如果各州和司法管辖区采用这些文件，则汤普斯（Tompos）的需求中有99％的信息将是相同的。
Captures Best Practices
Beyond the purchase cost of the standards, Colker figures there shouldn’t be any additional costs associated with use of the standards because they largely capture the best practices of many offsite manufacturers and designers.
But building teams, accustomed to an onsite process, will have to adjust to a new one, Colker adds. To help, ICC offers a course on the standards.
ICC 2024年国际建筑法规中包含的不适用于HUD制造的住房的标准的努力并未付诸实践。ICC的国际住宅法规更改过程正在进行中。
ICC and MBI aren’t waiting for adoption. “We are trying to get each state to directly adopt the standard or at least modify their regulations to be more in sync with the standards,” Hardiman says.
For example, in Washington state, where approvals were taking 18 to 22 weeks due to staff shortages, MBI began working with the Dept. of Labor & Industries in October. Consequently, the state began implementing third-party inspections and approvals in the short term to help clear up the backlog.
ICC和MBI尚未完成，以通过标准来促进模块化工作。12月，他们开始开发标准1210，这将解决机械，电气和管道系统元素，能源效率和节水的要求。
