Six months after an explosion and fire destroyed a grid-connected energy-storage battery facility in Surprise, Ariz., investigators are still trying to figure out all that happened. 

For more than two decades, science has recognized that building fires have become hotter, faster-spreading and more toxic. 

An update of a National Institute of Building Sciences study on benefit-to-cost ratios of hazard-mitigation investments has determined an 11:1 BCR over time for jurisdictions that have adopted model building code updates versus those that still use codes from the 1990s.

After approving a 2019 building code that requires all new homes in the state to have rooftop solar panels starting in 2020, the California Energy Commission is now eyeing commercial buildings.

A five-alarm fire at a wood-framed apartment building under construction in College Park, Md., has renewed calls to regulate “light-framed, combustible, podium construction,” known as Type V construction, in low- to midrise buildings.

Supporters of an updated structural building-design standard, developed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, are breathing a collective sigh of relief after members of the International Code Council voted down an attempt to keep the standard, known as ASCE 7-16, out of the 2018 edition of ICC’s International Building Code and its other model codes.