Develop a project plan to revise and or update ULC standards to reflect climate change adaptation, accounting for heavy rain, flood, wind, snow, ice, increased temperature variations and extreme weather events.

Under the Climate-Resilient Core Public Infrastructure project, the National Research Council’s Building Regulations for Market Access Program has a requirement to update their National Model Codes and referenced standards to reflect climate change adaptation and extreme weather events. The National Model Codes (e.g. Building, Fire, Plumbing, Energy) are produced and published by the National Research Council of Canada.

Specifically, the project is intended to provide a project plan to revise and or update ULC standards to reflect climate change adaptation, accounting for heavy rain, flood, wind, snow, ice, increased temperature variations and extreme weather events within the referenced standards.

The purpose of the project is to effectively and efficiently develop consensus-based revisions, and new standards, such that requirements in the subject referenced standards in the National Codes would increase resilience, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enhanced life cycle performance of public and private infrastructure assets constructed in the future and contribute to the sustainability of Canadian communities.

The Climate-Resilient Core Public Infrastructure project aims to integrate climate resilience into design guides, codes and related materials, which will be the basis for future infrastructure builds and rehabilitation work in Canada. The work would involve preparation of proposed changes to national model building, energy, fire, plumbing and updated related guidance documents. The proposed change modules could be adopted by provinces and territories in 2020.

This contract seeks to enter into an agreement with ULC to develop new and or update existing ULC Standards to address climate change adaptation and extreme weather events through a consensus based process established by the Standards Council of Canada. These deliverables will occur concurrently and in harmonization with the work currently underway at the NRC to update their National Model Codes.