An engineer weighs in on fees to obtain new building codes

Sergei Milhailenko, a Professional Engineer, did some research and sent us this post about what he says is the unfairness of fees for the Canada Building Code.

“Issuance of the building codes become a very good business for those who are the publishers: (various levels of) government. Updates every five years sell thousands of copies for (hundreds of dollars). It’s a multi-million dollar business for the minor changes they are doing.

Also consider, that these codes still have some major mistakes. Like, for example, the design wind load for Vancouver:
1998 q1/30 – 0.44kPa; 2006 q1/50 – 0.48 kPa; 2012 – q1/50 – 0.45kPa

This is also valid for other Canadian cities. It costs developers, contractors and customers a lot of money.

For example the first versi0n of the Canada Building Code was issued in 1940 or 1941. And it wasn’t changed until 1965, as far as I know. For 25 years we worked under the same code.

Another sample is Washington State in the U.S. Their code is available (free) online for anybody who wants to see it.”