Report of the MCAA Technical Committee

Words: Jerry PainterMr. President, fellow members, one of the most important tasks that still confronts the masonry industry is the new International Building Code and to ensure masonry's position in the construction market place. As you are aware, MCAA supports the Masonry Alliance For Codes and Standards (MACS) with a $5,000 contribution last year and then again this year. Our representative on MACS is Buddy Barnes and serves as its Treasurer. As you are aware, MACS is a total industry committee, solely focused on developing the masonry portion of the new IBC. On average, there are thirty-five to forty industry representatives who meet several times a year in two-day meetings. Reports that are presented are thicker than any one person can deal with. Every aspect of masonry is dealt with and every aspect of the construction code is impacted. It is our hope, that through this cooperative effort, masonry's future will be protected. We have a request from MACS for an additional $1,250 to cover research needs that have exceeded the original $100,000 budget. The need for the funding is to cover increased fire research. I would like to ask our representative to MACS, Buddy Barnes, to report further on MACS progress and this additional budget request. We support this additional request from MACS and urge MCAA to support the additional funding.

A goal of the Technical Committee is to insure that key industry code committees have sufficient contractor representation. Those committees include the Council For Masonry Research, Masonry Standards Joint Committee and ASTM. I would like to thank those MCAA members who represent the contractor interest at those committees. Dick Felice as chairman of CMR; Donald Grant as MCAA's technical representative on the CMR tech committee; Dick Felice, Brian Grant and myself serve on MSJC; and Buddy Barnes, Dick Lauber, Joe Martino, Dick Felice, and Al Wendt serve on the ASTM. Thank you all for your effort. We need to expand our involvement in all of these codes councils. We not only need contractor participation but we also need a technical staff representative to serve as well. Much of the work is done away from the formal meetings. As contractors, we can only be watch dogs at the meetings. We don't have the time to work on a daily basis. And we currently don't have the staff expertise. They are good at what they do, but they are not engineers. I urge the Board to work hard to budget a new technical staff hire who will represent our interests full time. I know that we have attempted to accomplish this through our voluntary dues contributions, but the total contributions for all four areas have fallen short. I believe we must either increase dues sufficient to accomplish this task in next years budget or seek chapter support to fund the staffing of a full time technical staff person. I realize that this position is not an income producing staff member, but it is critical to protecting our individual business interests.

Mr. President, that is the report of the Technical Committee.

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