Back to School? It Doesn't Stop There for Architects.

The phrase “Back to School” brings back immediate memories to most.  New lunch boxes, cool mornings at the bus stop and the smell of a brand new box of Crayolas are some of the first to come to my mind.  Heck, even the Rodney Dangerfield film of the same name is up there, regardless of how it dates me.  But that doesn’t matter, as I have a feeling I am going to date myself in many ways to follow here.

Architecture is one of those professions you “practice” along with Law and Medicine.  This term always fascinated me.  Here are three very different professions, each is entrusted with the public’s trust with every service.  But as a young architect, I quickly understood why we call it a “practice”.  School can never prepare you for everything that will be experienced when you begin to work, whether you’re a doctor, lawyer or architect.  These professions, more so than many others, require a deliberate dedication to continuing education, whether new to the profession or experienced.

I remember the summer between my fourth and fifth years in college.  I would go out and run into old friends who had already graduated and they would ask what I was up to.  Invariably I would tell them that I was headed back to school in the Fall, and they would look at me with either surprise or condescension and shake their heads at me.  “Oh, really?” they would say, “had such a good time in college you wanted to stay?”  And I would have to explain that: no, architecture is 5 years and I would be doing this thesis thing, and a BArch was one step further than a BS.  I know some of those “friends” just thought I was taking my time growing up.  It wasn’t technically graduate school, but I was furthering my education.

Then, when you get out of school you can’t even call yourself an architect.  You were an “intern” (there, I dated myself again – they don’t call it 'intern’ anymore).  While you first worked in the field, there was program where you would have to log all these hours to make sure you got a broad depth of experience.  At the same time, you would start thinking about all those tests you had to take for licensure.  In my day that was nine tests and they had just made them computerized (there I did it again, the test has been computerized longer than most of the people taking it today have been alive, and I think they consolidated it into seven tests now).  The topics covered by the exams ranged from art history to long span beam calculations.   You had to wait a minimum of three years before you could even sit the exam, so you continued to learn during that time.

The extra schooling, the intern program and professional exams don’t even touch on what architects do on a daily basis.  Interns have a lot of ground to catch up on in the professional world with real building envelopes, accessibility codes, learning to work with engineers and other consultants and a little thing called the budget.  These are all areas that are not focused on in school generally.  School teaches you how to think and solve problems.  The practice is literally everything else.

As professionals, we never stop educating ourselves.  If we’re lucky, when we’re new we will have the opportunity to work with experienced architects who are willing to share how they do things.  Sometimes their way won’t work for you, but that is all part of the learning experience.  New products seemingly spawn into existence every year; new technologies, new ways to shed water, new ways to frame the floor or roof, new requirements on conserving energy – things are always evolving everywhere.  Building codes continue to expand; rewritten every three or so years.  New guidelines can be written for particular building types that have to be followed.  Our noses should always be in some book or website.  I sometimes chuckle when I have to fill out the continuing education reports in order to maintain my AIA membership.  Sometimes it feels like I’ve done 18 hours of education in one day, depending on what I’ve gotten into that week.

And then there are our mistakes.  These are the school of hard knocks teachers.  In my role in technical code support and quality control in our office, my mistakes are what most directly help others.  I look for the things I’ve been nailed on in the past to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again.  After 20 years of doing this, I’ve made my share of missteps.  But I’ve also fixed each and every one of them.  In that respect, that is what makes architecture a “practice” rather than a “job”.  And yes, Allen Iverson, I’m talkin’ about PRACTICE.  You’ve got to do it even when you’re hurt in our game.  Even as a youngster, I realized that architecture was truly a white haired profession, one that was only mastered as a result of continued experiences.  The only thing I didn’t realize was that I would, more or less, have the same color hair, just a lot less of it.

Don't let your mistakes get you down.  They come in handy later.

While our children may be headed to the bus stop for the first time soon, architects simply head to work to continue to improve upon their craft.

I can’t end without a Rodney quote from Back to School: “I mean, the high school I went to, they asked a kid to prove the law of gravity, he threw the teacher out the window!”

This post is part of the ArchiTalks series in which Bob Borson of Life of an Architect selects a theme and a group of us (architects who also blog) all post on the same day and promote each other’s blogs. This month’s theme is "Back to School"  A lot of other talented writers who also are architects are listed below and are worth checking out:

Enoch Sears - Business of Architecture (@businessofarch)
Back to school!
Bob Borson - Life of An Architect (@bobborson)
http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/i-wish-i-were-going-back-to-school/
Matthew Stanfield - FiELD9: architecture (@FiELD9arch)
Designing Back to School
Jeff Echols - Architect Of The Internet (@Jeff_Echols)
What Have We Learned? It's Back To School For #ArchiTalks 21
Lee Calisti, AIA - Think Architect (@LeeCalisti)
good to go back to school
Lora Teagarden - L² Design, LLC (@L2DesignLLC)
4 Tips As You Go Back To School
Michele Grace Hottel - Michele Grace Hottel, Architect (@mghottel)
#architalks 21 "back to school"
brady ernst - Soapbox Architect (@bradyernstAIA)
Back to the Cartography Board
Brian Paletz - The Emerging Architect (@bpaletz)
Back to School
Michael LaValley - Evolving Architect (@archivalley)
#ArchiTalks / 15 Ways to Make the Most of Your Architectural Education
Eric Wittman - intern[life] (@rico_w)
getting [schooled] again
Jarod Hall - di'velept (@divelept)
Back to {Architecture} School
Keith Palma - Architect's Trace (@cogitatedesign)
bettermenTen
Adam Denais - Defragging Architecture (@DefragArch)
[ArchiTalks #21] 10 Things Architecture Students Say Going Back to School
Tim Ung - Journey of an Architect (@timothy_ung)
10 Things I wish I knew about Architecture School
Marica McKeel - Studio MM (@ArchitectMM)
ArchiTalks: "Back To School"
Mark R. LePage - EntreArchitect (@EntreArchitect)
Back to School: Marketing for Architects
Cormac Phalen - Cormac Phalen (@archy_type)
Back to School Again
Michael Riscica - Young Architect (@YoungArchitxPDX)
Let’s Get Back To (Architect) School …or Work.
Sharon George - Architecture By George (@sharonraigeorge)
What's better than architecture after school?
Drew Paul Bell - Drew Paul Bell (@DrewPaulBell)
Back to School...Suckasssssss
Kyu Young Kim - Palo Alto Design Studio (@sokokyu)
Back to School: Seoul Studio
Jared W. Smith - Architect OWL (@ArchitectOWL)
Back to School...

The Bottom Line on Non-Profits

Recently, I needed to reference an old code to research an existing project our office did nearly 20 years ago.  Not only was it an old code (1994) but one I have never used before, the SBC, the Standard Building Code.

You see, up until about 2000, there were three major building codes in the US.  BOCA, which was prevelant in the East and Midwest.  There was the Uniform Building Code in the West, and as I said, the Standard Building Code in the Southern states.  In 1997, the International Building Code (IBC) was released as a model code that all three regional Legacy Codes (as they were called) combined to create one code for the entire country.  How that makes it “International” I am not sure.  Kind of like the World Series – all the participants are American based teams (Blue Jays being the one exception theses days).  To my knowledge, nowhere in Canada or Mexico is the IBC used…maybe they are counting Guam and Puerto Rico?  By 1999 all of the Legacy Codes ceased to exist and most states adopted the IBC. 

Just some of the books from one edition of the IBC family.

Almost immediately, this model code, one for all states, began printing separate codes for individual states and even several cities, each based on the IBC but just enough different to make you buy a new book.  And some standards groups refused to join, including NFPA or the National Fire Prevention Code.  To make it even better, many states require buildings to conform to BOTH codes.  So another set of books.  Did I mention that most of the books are rewritten every three years?  And there are about nine books needed for a full set.  And oh yes, the publishers of all these books are non-profit groups.

Some of the NFPA family of codes and standards.  They disappear into the horizon.

So to get back to the original story, I was trying to find an online resource for the 1994 code.  I merely needed to look at it for a few minutes.  I didn’t need to borrow it.  So I thought I found it, and downloaded a large PDF, only to see it was locked.  I needed a code to open it.  For that, the ICC (the Non-Profit organization that prints the International Building Code) wanted to have $75.  Imagine my frustration.  How did a 20 year old code rate 75 bucks for a Non-Profit?  Not only was the code old, the organization that created it didn't exist any longer!  I did some more searching for other sources, and I found a letter on an organization’s web page.  It came up in my search but had very little to do with the SBC Code, except for this:  Building codes and other standards are created by non-profit organizations quite often.  But they are in turn adopted into Law by the jurisdiction requiring adherence.  By definition, a law is the property of the people, and the people must be allowed access to the laws for free.  That is my non-lawyer interpretation, anyway.

They only get bigger.  Editions of the FGI (1997, 2001, 2006 & 2010 bottom to top)
2010 had to be split in 2 volumes.

It is hard for me to believe that these Non-Profits don’t rack in tons of money, much like health systems.  Reading deeper into the letter I found they published the salaries the chief executives of many of the Non-Profit organizations I see in my daily work life.  Now, I am not saying they don’t work hard.  But consider this:  each executive of these organizations makes more than the Chief Executive of the United State of America (also a non-profit entity).

Compensation of Major Nonprofits Involved in Standards Setting

Rank  Name of Nonprofit Organization       Name of Leader       Year   Amount

1        Underwriters' Laboratories                 K. Williams              2009   $2,075,984

2        National Sanitation Foundation          Kevin Lawlor           2009   $1,140,012

3        British Standards Institution               Howard Kerr            2010   $1,029,161

4        NFPA                                                  James Shannon      2009   $926,174

5        ANSI                                                   Saranjit Bhatia         2010   $916,107

6        ASTM International                            James Thomas         2009   $782,047

7        IEEE                                                   James Prendergast  2009   $422,412

8        Society of Automotive Engineers       David L. Schutt         2009   $422,128

9        American Soc. of Mech. Engineers    Thomas Loughlin      2009   $420,960

10      The United States of America             Barack Obama          2011   $400,000

(Source:  Public.Resource.Org Letter dated June 26, 2012 - except #10)

We, as architects, often run into issues where a building code official may require us to insert information directly from the referenced standard in our drawings.  This brings up an interesting point.  There are copyright protections written all over these standards.  What would Ms. Clouser, my high school English teacher say?  That is plagiarism.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office:

Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar official legal documents are not copyright-able for reasons of public policy.  (Source:  Public.Resource.Org Letter dated June 26, 2012).  This principal surely has to apply to Building Codes as each state passes legislature in order to adopt a building code, doesn’t it?  After a lawsuit against the SBC, the group Public.Resource.Org has been publishing many building codes online as PDF’s. 

So the edge is very thin.  Organizations do spend lots of money to create building codes and standards.  But they also seem to reap serious amounts of dough in book sales while maintaining a Non-Profit status along with the accompanying tax benefits. Once adopted, these codes are law, and by default, the property of the people .

Why should I pay $75 for a moldy old book?  I didn’t have to.  I finally found the actual paper copy in our office, luckily.  But virtually any law, ordinance or criminal code in my area, I can easily find online for free.  From dog leash laws to burning of leaves, I know where I stand.  But for some reason, those laws dealing with building construction and the protection of the health, safety and welfare of the human occupants within, are not readily available to the public.

Update Since the Original Creation of this Article:

Both NFPA and the ICC have since made all of their current codes, including some of the previous editions of their codes and standards, available online at their websites. They are read only, but that is all you need, especially if you're just looking for an old code for reference.  Three cheers for them!