POLICY REPORT
BUILDING AND PLANNING
Date: October 31, 1995
Dept. File No. PL003.RPT
TO: Vancouver City Council
FROM: City Building Inspector
SUBJECT: Completion of the Adoption of 1995 National Building
Code and Special Requirements for the Construction of
Smaller Buildings
RECOMMENDATION
A. THAT Council accept in principle amendments to the Building
By-law to incorporate changes from Part 3 of the new 1995
National Building Code of Canada and some B.C. Building Code
Fire and Life-Safety requirements for buildings.
B. THAT Council accept in principle amendments to the Building
By-law by incorporating the new 1995 National Building Code
of Canada requirements from Part 9 specifically related to
structural design and construction of smaller wood frame
buildings and some minor additional changes to improve
earthquake- and weather-resistance.
C. THAT Council instruct the Director of Legal Services to
bring forward the new By-law changes.
GENERAL MANAGER'S COMMENTS
The General Manager of Community Services RECOMMENDS approval of
A, B and C.
COUNCIL POLICY
Council has always promoted principles of good building practice
through adoption and updating of modern Building By-laws, cost-
effective enforcement and general simplification of all City
regulations.
PURPOSE
This report recommends to Council that we adopt the recent changes in
the 1995 version of the National Building Code of Canada, (NBC'95)
from Part 3 which relate to Fire and Life Safety requirements for
Buildings. It also recommends that the City adopt as regulations for
small buildings the latest wood framing and other construction
requirements published in the 1995 version of the National Building
Code of Canada (NBC'95) Part 9 (Smaller Buildings).
DISCUSSION
By adopting the Part 9 construction requirements for small buildings
from NBC'95, we are intending to provide a specialized Part of the By-
law which will be very simple to use for constructing smaller wood
frame buildings. We are continually experiencing construction
problems with these buildings, since these requirements are mixed with
requirements for single family dwellings presently.
As there has been little attention paid to West Coast seismic problems
previously, we propose to add to the requirements for small buildings,
some simple earthquake resistance require-ments, borrowed from U.S.
codes. The intent is to allow designers other than professional
engineers and architects an opportunity to design these smaller wood
frame buildings.
We also propose to provide some improved prescriptive require-ments
for weather-protection for these smaller buildings. These
requirements will generally be based upon those for larger buildings
but simplified for better understanding and have already been
discussed with the industry. Over the next few years, this should
improve the weather-resistance of small buildings not designed by
professional engineers or architects. These requirements may also be
used as training guides for tradesmen.
Additionally, we are proposing at the same time to simplify and
significantly reduce the size of our current Part 9 (Smaller
Buildings), with the introduction of the "Dwelling Code" concept as a
companion report, and removal of all material related to single family
housing from our current Part 9. Also some requirements for health,
fire and life-safety, are to be relocated to Part 3 of the By-law,
where applicable. Most of Part 9 will then be simply removed as being
redundant, which should significantly reduce the By-law volume. This
direction has been fully supported by all the provinces for several
years and is on the National Building Code's agenda, possibly for the
N.B.C.
2001. We recommend making this change now at the same time that we
are making other improvements to simplify the By-law.
We are also revising Part 3 (Fire, Life and Health Require-ments) of
the Building By-law with By-law amendments as previously approved by
Council, but will update the existing requirements at the same time.
Some recent changes to Part 3, that were adopted into the NBC' 95,
together with some B.C. Building Code '92 and the existing Vancouver
amendments will round out our new simplified version of this Part.
We are also planning to relocate all the "alternative require-ments
for the upgrading of existing buildings" into a new Part 10 of the By-
law. This will clearly show that requirements are alternatives for
upgrading "existing" buildings and should not be used for new
buildings.
CONCLUSION
This major change (simplification of Part 9) to contain only
construction requirements for smaller buildings) will result in
substantial simplification of our By-law, a direction that most
jurisdictions have said they would like to move in the future. With
development of the "Dwelling Code", the change can now be
accomplished, and will reduce the volume of the Code signifi-cantly.
This will probably be the last in the present series of major changes
to the Building By-law, as we upgrade to adopt current changes from
the N.B.C.'95 with some B.C. Building Code amend-ments.
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