IMPROVING THE SEISMIC SAFETY OF EXISTING BUILDINGS

Guidelines/Commentary Development Project

In August 1991, NIBS entered into a cooperative agreement with FEMA for a comprehensive 6-year program leading to the development of a set of nationally applicable guidelines for the seismic rehabilitation of existing buildings. Under this agreement, the BSSC served as program manager with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Applied Technology Council (ATC) working as subcontractors. Initially, FEMA provided funding for a program definition activity designed to generate the detailed work plan for the overall program. The work plan was completed in April 1992 and in September FEMA contracted with NIBS for the remainder of the effort.

The major objectives of the project were to develop a set of technically sound, nationally applicable guidelines (with commentary) for the seismic rehabilitation of buildings to serve as a primary resource on the seismic rehabilitation of buildings for the use of design professionals, model code and standards organizations, state and local building regulatory personnel, and educators; to develop building community consensus regarding the guidelines; and to develop the basis of a plan for stimulating widespread acceptance and application of the guidelines.

The project work was structured to ensure that the technical guidelines writing effort benefits from: consideration of the results of completed and ongoing technical efforts and research activities as well as societal issues, public policy concerns, and the recommendations presented in an earlier FEMA-funded report on issues identification and resolution; cost data on application of rehabilitation procedures; the reactions of potential users; and consensus review by a broad spectrum of building community interests.

While overall management remained the responsibility of the BSSC, responsibility for conduct of the specific project tasks was shared by the BSSC with ASCE (which organized user workshops and conducted literature review and other research activities) and ATC (which was responsible for drafting the Guidelines, its Commentary, and a volume of example applications as well as conducting a study to assess the validity of several concepts being proposed for use in the Guidelines). Specific BSSC tasks were conducted under the guidance of a BSSC Project Committee. To ensure project continuity and direction, a Project Oversight Committee (POC) was responsible to the BSSC Board for accomplishment of the project objectives and the conduct of project tasks. Further, a Seismic Rehabilitation Advisory Panel was established to review project products and to advise the POC and, if appropriate, the BSSC Board, on the approach being taken, problems arising or anticipated, and progress being made. In addition, three workshops were held over the course of the project to provide the Guidelines/Commentary writers with input from potential users of the documents.

The BSSC Board of Direction accepted the 100-percent-complete draft of the Guidelines and Commentary for consensus balloting in mid-August 1996. The first round of balloting occurred in October-December with a ballot symposium for the voting representatives held in November 1996.

The Guidelines and Commentary were approved by the BSSC membership; however, a significant number of comments were received. The ATC Senior Technical Committee reviewed these comments in detail and commissioned members of the technical teams that developed the Guidelines to develop detailed responses and to formulate any needed proposals for change reflecting the comments. This effort resulted in 48 proposals for change to be submitted to the BSSC member organizations for a second round of balloting.

Following acceptance of the second ballot materials by the BSSC Board, the voting occurred in June-July 1997. Again the results were compiled for review by ATC. Meeting in September 1997, the Project Oversight Committee received recommendations from ATC regarding comment resolution and concluded that none of the changes proposed in response to ballot comments was sufficiently substantive to warrant reballoting. Subsequently, the POC conclusion was presented to the BSSC Board, which agreed and approved finalization of the Guidelines and Commentary for submittal to FEMA for publication. The final versions of the documents then were prepared and transmitted to FEMA in September 1997 and published copies became available in March 1998.

During the course of the project, BSSC Project Committee recommendations resulted in the following additions to the NIBS/BSSC contract with FEMA for the project: the BSSC ballot symposium for voting representatives mentioned above; the case studies project described below; and an effort to develop the curriculum for and conduct a series of two-day educational seminars to introduce and provide training in use of the Guidelines to practicing structural and architectural engineers, seismic engineering educators and students, building officials and technical staff, interested contractors, hazard mitigation officers, and others.

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Local Phone: (202) 289-7800
Fax: (202) 289-1092      Email: bmurphy@nibs.org