Following a presidential proclamation in the U.S., the International Code Council (ICC) kicked off its 43rd annual Building Safety Month on May 1st. The campaign aims to raise awareness among individuals, families, and businesses about the importance of constructing and maintaining safe and sustainable structures around the world.
On April 28, President Joe Biden signed a proclamation recognizing May 2023 as National Building Safety Month in the U.S. and its territories.
Biden stated, “We need to do more to help everyone prepare for and prevent disasters; to promote building safety; and to support our too-often overlooked engineers, construction workers, and code enforcement inspectors, who do so much every day to keep Americans safe.”
Building Safety Month includes five weekly themes, each addressing how building safety impacts us on a personal, local, and global level. In general, the campaign reinforces that:
- Adopting modern building codes and standards is critical to keeping people safe.
- Building safety is everyone’s responsibility, and there are ways to get involved.
- Disaster preparedness saves lives and ensures a safer future.
“Building Safety Month calls attention to the hard work of building safety professionals that build, design, and inspect our buildings to ensure the comfort and safety of their occupants,” said ICC CEO Dominic Sims. “We greatly appreciate the U.S. administration’s support for this initiative, which helps foster collaboration across the industry and reinforces the importance of adopting and implementing up-to-date codes and standards.”
More Building Safety Month information and resources can be found here.