Saved Lives and Better Buildings: Technical Contributions That Make a Difference

摘要

It is indeed an honor to have the opportunity to participate in this NIST Centennial Standards Symposium. I, like many of you, was engaged by Larry Eicher's war games model this morning, a Standards War Game. My talk deals mostly with the second and third columns, situations where there are either wasteful or dangerous implications to our interactions. The issues at stake in many of the building and fire safety standards that we deal with are just that: matters of either public health or safety, and often life safety. I also want to focus on the last two of the principles in the national standards strategy in your handout package, and in particular on the bottom of page 4. One deals with the phrase, "Use of current available technology," and the last principle addresses performance-based standards. My point is that I don't think that either of these statements goes anywhere near far enough in describing what, in fact, needs to be done to respond to the mounting pressures for globalization on the one hand, and standards and practices that reduce costly wastes and losses—often involving loss of life and injury—on the other.