NRMCA’s Lionel Lemay participated in the first of six workshops organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to address the President’s Climate Action Plan that directs NIST to convene a panel on disaster-resilience standards. The objective of the workshops is to develop a comprehensive, community-based resilience framework and provide guidelines for consistently safe buildings and infrastructure. The April 7 meeting, held at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD, engaged a broad network of stakeholders to focus on the role that buildings and infrastructure play in ensuring community resilience. Through the workshops, NIST will develop a Disaster Resilience Framework to establish the overall performance goals; assess existing standards, codes and practices, and identify gaps that must be addressed in order to bolster community resilience.

Additional workshops are planned throughout the remainder of 2014 and early 2015 with April 2015 as the target for the first draft of the framework. NRMCA’s Lemay and Tien Peng will participate in all six conferences in order to ensure the document focuses appropriately on standards and incentives for resilient constructions.