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ICC ES Acceptance Criteria for Sale

When comparing what is done in the US with organizations in other countries it is important to understand the difference in our legal systems. Apparently crown corporations are owned by the crown. Thus their motivation is different from ICC-ES which is a private entity that has no legal standing regards building codes. It appears that some crown corporations could serve a similar purpose to administrative agencies in the US.

ICC-ES is beholden to its customers the manufacturers of the products that have evaluation reports. This has at times had an impact on the quality of the evaluation reports.
 
Hopefully what tmurray pointed out on abrupt and unexpected decisions won't happen again. It was very sad when ICC removed the criteria from the web for an extended period just before they came back out at the current cost levels.. There was no notice of that this was forthcoming nor was there any explanation why the change was made. You had to call and answer a lot of questions to get a copy without assurance of obtaining what you needed.
 
Mark K said:
When comparing what is done in the US with organizations in other countries it is important to understand the difference in our legal systems. Apparently crown corporations are owned by the crown. Thus their motivation is different from ICC-ES which is a private entity that has no legal standing regards building codes. It appears that some crown corporations could serve a similar purpose to administrative agencies in the US.

ICC-ES is beholden to its customers the manufacturers of the products that have evaluation reports. This has at times had an impact on the quality of the evaluation reports.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear as to the finances of crown corps because I don't imagine folks south of the border are familiar with them and certainly wouldn't expect you to be.

Crown corporations are created by the federal or provincial governments and provided with a mandate. After that, they are essentially run like private companies. The government will bail them out if they get into financial trouble and the president of the corporation is appointed by the government, but that is usually the extent of the government's interference of their operations. Canada being very large from a land mass perspective and small from a population standpoint, resulted in this being necessary as it wasn't financially feasible for things like power utilities, airlines or even materials testing in the case of CCMC. There is some argument to whether all these corporations are still needed.

Getting back on track, CCMC is expected to be cost neutral. Testing is performed at accredited labs and submitted to CCMC staff to review. The process for review can take about 6 months and is very costly for the manufacturer. Once a listing of the product is issued, it is available for free and the testing criteria is also usually available. I would think the same strains on revenue are felt by both CCMC and ICC-ES along with the need to serve their paying clients (manufacturer's). We have certainly seen some strains, particularly in the case of ICF approvals.

I would imagine the pay for use ES reports are to help lessen the financial reliance on manufacturer's and provide more freedom to the experts performing the reviews. Making the reports free for its members is certainly a reasonable compromise and I'm certain this was not an easy decision for ICC-ES to make. Ultimately, ICC-ES is not always the only game in town, meaning they must maintain cost competitiveness with their competition or risk bankruptcy.
 
Mark K said:
When comparing what is done in the US with organizations in other countries it is important to understand the difference in our legal systems. Apparently crown corporations are owned by the crown. Thus their motivation is different from ICC-ES which is a private entity that has no legal standing regards building codes. It appears that some crown corporations could serve a similar purpose to administrative agencies in the US.

ICC-ES is beholden to its customers the manufacturers of the products that have evaluation reports. This has at times had an impact on the quality of the evaluation reports.
Click to expand...
I would agree. You know that the U.S. as I understand it is pretty unique in that most countries codes are written by the government. Of course the U.S. is different with public / government partnerships with the purpose of unburdening government to produce the codes. Based on my 59 + years on this planet and given the rousing successes of our federal government I'll place my bet on the public sector every time.
 
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