Two years ago, the National Modular Housing Council (NMHC) began following the IRC code change process. The IRC was selected as the most appropriate forum to provide oversight since this code was used in a majority of states for modular home design and construction. The IRC is the residential code that is included in the International Code series promulgated by the International Code Council (ICC). The IRC was formerly known to the modular industry as the old CABO One- and Two-Family Dwelling Code.

During year 2003, which was the last year of a 3-year code revision cycle that led to the issuance of the IRC 2003 edition, staff obtained a code consultant to oversee the NMHC interests. That particular year achieved a number of objectives, mainly to be reactive to proposed code changes that were already in the IRC pipeline.

The ICC revised their code change process and went to two 18-month cycles every three years after the IRC 2003 edition was published (ICC had been on a three 12-month cycles until then). The first 18-month cycle recently ended in May 2004. The second 18-month cycle will begin in August 2004.

The NMHC determined during the Summer meeting, along with concurrence of the Manufacturers Division and the Technical Activities Committee, that we should take a pro-active stance and begin to submit code changes to the IRC for consideration during the upcoming 2004/05 revision cycle. NMHC issued a call for IRC proposals on July 9th to solicit potential code changes from its modular membership. The code change submittal deadline has been established as August 20, 2004.

Code changes could take the form of design (prescriptive or performance-based criteria) and construction requirements for modular homes, installation criteria, prescriptive material requirements, or reference standard updates. MHI is seeking topics that may cover problems industry has experienced in the field that might be corrected through revising the IRC rather than battling code officials at the local level.

The NMHC will consider all potential code changes for submission to the IRC. All potential code changes should indicate:

·What IRC section is proposed for revision
·What the intent of the proposal is (revise current section, add a new section or delete an existing section)
·The reason for the change

Without this information, the NMHC will not be able to process your suggested change. Kindly submit your suggested change(s) by Monday, July 26th to Mark Nunn.
This will provide ample time to develop the change, send it back to the respective groups for review, revise if necessary, and submit to the IRC by the August 20th due date.

For further information on processing code changes, or the IRC code development cycle in general, contact Mark Nunn at (703) 558-0665 or mark@modularcouncil.org. You may also fax your code change(s) to the NMHC at 703.558.0401.

The NMHC intends to submit no more than 10 code changes for the upcoming revision cycle. Since the NMHC is new to the IRC process, it is first necessary to become known to the IRC and its governing body. Submitting too many changes at the onset could jeopardize other issues considered to be of a more important nature.