[…] Smith, advised by a three-person board and funded by a grant from Open Philanthropy, now works under the Center for Building in North America. It is an effort to improve the way the country builds by dissecting what Smith estimates is over 100,000 pages of technical specifications, and determining which parts might be doing more harm than good.
Pressure is mounting on U.S. building codes from all sides. Advocates for flagging downtowns would like to change the rules to make it easier to convert office buildings into apartments. California is grappling with how stringent codes might be impeding the recovery from the Los Angeles wildfires (and how lax rules might have caused the disaster in the first place). Conservatives are furious over energy-efficiency updates, and some red states have sued the federal government over their enforcement. Modular construction companies are grappling with the country’s fragmented code landscape, in which rules can vary between states and cities.