GSA opposes new high-rise building provisions: STORY UPDATED
The dispute reflects a debate among safety officials and real estate executives nationwide as to how to respond adequately to the 2001 attacks.
Amara Rozgus -- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 9/12/2008 1:00:00 AM
STORY UPDATE
GSA, after further evaluation, has clarified its position on two matters under consideration by the International Code Council.
GSA will withdraw its proposal to change (or reduce) the requirements for fireproofing (bond strength of sprayed fire resistive materials) applied to steel structures in tall buildings.
GSA will also withdraw its comment on an additional stairwell as there is now a comment to allow elevator evacuation to be considered. GSA’s proposal to use elevators for occupant evacuation helps to better evacuate buildings by providing an alternative means to safely. GSA’s goal has been that building designers should have options available to provide occupant evacuation, and those options can be applied to the individual circumstances of site, configuration, materials and building use.
Importantly, GSA will continue to support, as will NIST, four additional proposals that improve occupant safety—all of which support recommendations in the NIST World Trade Center report:
*Strengthen the code to plan for more stair capacity
*Add requirements for two-way communication systems between the elevator landing and the fire control center—this aids people with limited mobility to use stairwells
*Require a written fire safety and evacuation plan
*Strengthen the exit stair size requirement.
GSA's greatest responsibility is the safety and well being of people—a key way that GSA upholds this responsibility is by supporting and advocating construction standards that make our buildings safe and secure.
A New York Times story reports that the General Services Administration has joined some of the nation’s biggest landlords in trying to repeal stronger safety requirements for new skyscrapers that were added to the country’s most widely used building code last year, arguing that they would be too expensive to meet.
The new provisions, which include requiring tall office buildings to have more robust fireproofing and an extra emergency stairwell, were enacted as a result of an exhaustive federal study into the collapse of the twin towers at the World Trade Center seven years ago this week.
The General Services Administration, which serves as the federal government’s property manager, is now opposing the tougher standards, even though they were based on a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which issues recommendations for safety standards after investigating fires and other building catastrophes.
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Although GSA update written by Amara Rozgus did not answer my question as to why an Engineer was not paid higher rate even when senior engineering executives recommended it and wanted to pay him and how bureaucratic lady running the Fort Worth office or Harlingen area refused to hire the engineer at higher salary and withdrew the offer to that engineer. I am glad to see the 9/12/08 post and people bringing my attention to it that GSA will no longer oppose the strengthening of the code and will not oppose use of elevators for evacuation(in an independent structure) or will not oppose additional stairwell or further fire insulation.
Engineering community and professional engineers in USA working for Government need to wake up and understand that they take oath of protecting the public by enforcing codes and standards and need to improve American life style because definition of engineering is improve, modify and or make it better for human man kind over what is existing.
So, if any bureaucrat in government wants to eliminate engineering positions and want to hire corrupt consultants who will toe his or her way or do not accept engineering recommendations in name of schedule or prices then such bureaucrat needs to be exposed with their blunders. Glad to see GSA retreat.
Rajendera K. Kapoor - 10/9/2008 11:22:00 PM CDT -
It is not surprise to see the Government Agency that wastes so much money in fact finding and lessons learning after the fact that they make mistakes and design buildings that do not meet some time even codes but most times design standards come out against any progressive ideas and stringent construction requirements.
This is the agency where engineers are not paid for what they deserve but what an administrator wants to pay them against the advice of their own senior engineers. So in a sense engineers are treated as third class citizens within the bureaucracy.
Having such opposition is not new, what needs to be done is that if there was even a single GSA or GSA leased department employee in buildings that came down, his or her family should seek justice and should file a law suite against GSA and all things will be OK.
Ask them why they have failed to provide minimum services in New Orleans and are so late in meeting Border post needs in Harlingen, you will know they will not pay a highly qualified engineer higher step in salary because a bureaucrat lady will not agree for it.
It is essential that engineers should expose such bureaucrat to public and not oppose these good standards for costs, they should ask Government to foot the bill just like private sector will. Good comapnies and employers are not going to have their employees die or lose buildings neither should Government.
Rajendera K. Kapoor - 9/9/2008 7:26:00 PM CDT
