How to Represent Your Shop on a Code Proposal

Why this matters

Somewhere in your state right now, a code change that will decide how you install, what you carry on the truck or what a homeowner pays you for is moving through a committee. The people in that room are code officials, manufacturers, builders' groups and a few contractors who showed up. The contractors who showed up with a specific field example routinely move the outcome, because they are the only ones who can say what actually happens in an attic in August. This card is the procedure for one small shop taking one position on one proposal. How the model code and adoption processes work is owned elsewhere (see related: How Codes and Licensing Rules Actually Get Made), and so is why a shop should bother (see related: The Shop as a Citizen of Its Trade).

Step 1: Pin down which stage the proposal is in

Before anything else, find out whether the change is a proposal to a model code (the International Codes from the ICC, or the National Electrical Code and other NFPA documents) or a state or local amendment being considered while your jurisdiction adopts a new edition. The stage decides who votes, what form your input takes and how much time you have. A model code change on its first hearing may be years from reaching your inspector; a state amendment at its adoption hearing may be law in months.

Read the notice for the deadline and write it on the shop calendar with a date two weeks earlier for your draft.

What breaks if you skip it: owners spend effort testifying at a model code hearing about a change their state will amend anyway, or miss the state adoption hearing that actually decides the rule they work under.

Step 2: Get on your association's code committee, or at least on its list

Most state and regional trade associations have a code or legislative committee that tracks proposals, writes the association's position and sends someone to testify. Joining it gets you three things a single shop cannot easily get alone: early warning (committees see proposals months before a supply house rumor does), a staff member or volunteer who knows the hearing rules, and an organization whose position the committee hearing the proposal is used to weighing. Your field example goes into the association's testimony, and you may be asked to deliver it.

If you cannot join, ask to be on the committee's distribution list and tell the chair you have data on the specific proposal.

Coordinating with competitors to petition a government body is protected activity under the antitrust laws, which is why association code committees can do this work at all. Keep the committee's discussion on the code. Prices, pay and customers stay out of that room as they do everywhere else (see related: Antitrust Lines for Associations and Owner Groups).

What breaks if you skip it: your comment arrives as one contractor's view, unconnected to the position the rest of your trade took, and sometimes contradicting it.

Step 3: Read the actual proposal text and decide your exact position

Get the proposal itself, not a summary. A code proposal shows the section number, the current text with deletions struck through and additions underlined, and a reason statement from the proponent. Read all three, then decide which of four positions you hold: support as written, oppose, support with a modification, or no position. Write the position as one sentence that names the section.

"Support with a modification" is often the strongest position for a small shop, because it agrees with the proponent's problem and fixes the part that does not work in the field. If you choose it, write the exact wording you want, in the same strike-and-underline form.

What breaks if you skip it: opposing a summary instead of the text. A surprising number of contractor comments argue against something the proposal does not say.

Step 4: Build one field example from your own records

One specific, checkable example from your own work beats a page of general argument. Pull it from your job records: how many jobs of the relevant kind, over what period, how many showed the problem, what it cost in labor hours or callbacks, and what you photographed. Strip customer names and addresses. State the period and the count so anyone can see the base.

Keep the example honest about what it does not show. If your records cover only service calls and not new installs, say so. Committees are full of people who will ask.

What breaks if you skip it: without data, your testimony is an opinion, and a committee hearing twenty opinions in an afternoon weighs the ones it can check.

Step 5: Put it in the form the stage requires, before the deadline

Each stage takes input in its own form. At an ICC Committee Action Hearing, anyone may testify, typically for a short, fixed time set by the hearing rules (commonly a couple of minutes), and written materials may be submitted under the published deadlines. At the ICC public comment stage, input takes the form of a public comment that asks for a specific action, often with modified wording. For NFPA documents, input is filed as public input or a public comment through the document's page by the stated closing date. At a state or local adoption hearing, the code council or building department sets its own comment and testimony rules in the notice.

Submit the written version even if you plan to testify. The written record is what the committee's staff and members read afterward.

What breaks if you skip it: a late or wrong-form submission is often not considered at all, however good it is.

Step 6: Testify in the shape a committee can use

When you speak, say five things in this order: your name, shop and trade; your position and the section number; the field example, with the count and the period; what you are asking the committee to do; and that you are available for questions. Do not read your whole written comment. Do not attack the proponent. If the proponent's concern is real, say so and say how your position addresses it.

Bring printed copies of a one-page summary with your example on it. Answer questions with "I don't know, I can find out" when that is the truth.

Step 7: Follow the vote and the next stage

Record the committee's action on the day. Then find out what happens next: under ICC procedure, committee results can be challenged by public comment and decided at a later hearing and an online vote by governmental members; under NFPA, the committee's ballot on the first and second drafts decides most outcomes; at a state adoption, the council's recommendation may go on to a legislature or an administrative rule. A loss at one stage is often a chance at the next, and a win can be undone at the next if nobody shows up to defend it.

When the final edition or amendment is published, check that the text matches what was voted, and tell your techs what changed and when it takes effect in your jurisdiction.

A worked example: defending a service receptacle requirement

A ten-person heating and cooling shop in a state that is adopting the 2023 National Electrical Code. NEC section 210.63, in the 2023 edition, requires a 125-volt receptacle outlet at an accessible location within 25 feet of heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment, with exceptions that edition lists. A builders' group has proposed a state amendment that would delete the requirement for new one-family dwellings, citing construction cost.

Step 1. This is a state amendment at the adoption stage, heard by the state's code council. The notice sets written comments due 30 days before the hearing. The owner calendars his draft for 44 days before the hearing (the 30-day deadline plus his two weeks).

Step 2. The owner is already on the state HVAC association's code committee. The committee decides to oppose the amendment and asks members for field data.

Step 3. He reads the proposed amendment text: it strikes 210.63 for new one-family dwellings and offers no alternative. His position: "Oppose the proposed deletion of NEC 210.63 for new one-family dwellings."

Step 4. His office manager pulls 14 months of service records for houses built in the last ten years with equipment in an attic or on a roof. There were 214 such calls. On 61 of them, which is 61 of 214, or about 28.5 percent, the tech's notes or photos show no usable receptacle near the equipment, whether never installed, blocked or dead. On those 61 calls the techs ran extension cords from inside the house, typically up an attic ladder or pull-down stair, and the shop's estimate from timesheets is about 15 minutes extra per call, or 61 times 15, 915 minutes, a little over 15 labor hours across the period. The shop's safety log also shows two reported trips over a cord on a pull-down attic stair, neither causing an injury. He notes the limitation: service calls only, and the 15 minutes is an estimate from timesheet patterns, not a timed study.

Step 5. The association files a written comment carrying his data. He signs up to testify for the association.

Step 6. At the hearing he says: "I own a ten-person heating and cooling shop. We oppose the deletion of 210.63 for new homes. In 14 months we ran 214 service calls to attic or rooftop equipment in houses under ten years old; on 61 there was no receptacle nearby, so the tech ran a cord up an attic ladder, adding about 15 minutes a call, and our log shows two trips on those cords. We ask the council to keep 210.63 as adopted. Happy to take questions." A council member asks whether the extra time is billed to the homeowner. He answers that it lands on the service ticket as labor.

Step 7. The council's committee votes to recommend disapproval of the amendment. The builders' group does not pursue it at the full council. When the state publishes its adopted amendments, the owner confirms 210.63 stands unamended and puts the effective date on the shop's calendar for the training meeting.

What would have changed the plan: if the builders' group had proposed a modification rather than a deletion, say allowing the receptacle at a greater distance, the shop's likely position would have shifted to "support with a modification" and the field example would have needed distances, not just presence or absence. If the change had been a model code proposal to the NFPA's code-making panel instead of a state amendment, the input would have gone in as public input or public comment by the NFPA's closing date, and the vote would have belonged to the panel.

How you know you represented the shop well

• Your written comment arrived before the deadline in the required form, and you have the confirmation.
• Your testimony stated the section, the position, the count and the period, and fit in the time allowed.
• The committee's or council's record mentions your example or your association's comment, or you can see where your point was answered.
• Your techs know the outcome and the effective date in your jurisdiction.

References

• National Electrical Code (NFPA 70), section 210.63, 2023 edition, as adopted by your jurisdiction with its amendments
• International Code Council and NFPA code development procedures, as published for the current cycle
• See related: How Codes and Licensing Rules Actually Get Made
• See related: How to Get Appointed to a Licensing Board or Code Committee
• See related: Antitrust Lines for Associations and Owner Groups