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Washington, D.C. — May 10, 2016 — The White House recently held an event on resilience in the built environment, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) was honored to participate as a member of the Resilience Building Coalition.
The White House hosted the Conference on Resilient Building Codes to highlight the critical role of building codes in furthering community resilience, and the importance of incorporating resilience and the future impacts of climate change into the codes and standards development process.
As part of the event, the White House highlighted federal- and private-sector efforts seeking to advance resilience principles in building codes, standards, and design.
Neil Shah, Americas managing director, who represented RICS at the event, said, "RICS is committed to working with the private sector and government partners to promote the development of cities that are resilient to environmental and socio-economic instability. To this end, RICS welcomes the White House’s increased attention to the important role of codes and standards in achieving building resilience. The organization aims to support the White House initiative via several commitments RICS has made to the coalition.”
These commitments include:
• Incorporating resilience measures into RICS Practice Statements with which all members must comply.
• Aligning with stakeholders across built environment sectors with a key interest in sustainable and resilient buildings, such as those in geographically vulnerable areas.
• Continuing to promote wider adoption of international standards such as International Property Measurement Standards (IPMS) and International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS). Such benchmarks can improve the accuracy of damage assessment and recovery needs.
• Working with leading industry partners to embed reliable data on climate and the built environment in approaches to resilience and sustainability.
• Continuing discussion of the International Accord for Building Safety.
RICS promotes and enforces the highest professional qualifications and standards in the development and management of land, real estate, property, and construction. It accredits 118,000 professionals, and any individual or firm registered with RICS is subject to its quality assurance.
