Growth in cold-formed steel structures has long been tied to developing and advancing the engineering standards that govern their use in construction. The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) has taken a leadership role in this activity in North America since 1946. Conventional standards providing closed-formed solutions to member capacity, such as the recently completed suite of AISI Standards in 2015 and 2016. These standards have reached an impressive level of maturity given the complexity of designing entire (building) structural systems out of steel that is rarely greater than 2mm thick. However, the demands on the structural engineer designing cold-formed steel have evolved. System performance, resilience, and sustainability all present new challenges, while changing processes in construction and the integration of simulation tools in design alter engineering workflows and open up new opportunities. Cold-formed steel standards need to evolve to meet these demands and leverage new workflows. The Strategic Planning Committee of the AISI Standards Council facilitated a process that defined areas of focus (vision statements) for the AISI specification writing committees and then facilitated a process to generate prioritized issues for the subcommittees to address. Taken together the lists provide a snapshot of the needed work to evolve cold-formed steel standards, and in turn enable next-generation cold-formed steel structural systems. This paper provides a description of the strategic planning process and its significant outcomes, which will guide the efforts of AISI standards development over the next code development cycle and beyond.
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