Criteria Development
Alternative Criteria Process
February 2010
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Alternative Criteria Process
The “alternative criteria process” provides a means to bypass triannual hearings of the Evaluation Committee and gain quicker approval of new and revised acceptance criteria. A criteria qualifies for the alternative process only if, in the opinion of ICC-ES staff, it meets one of the following requirements:
- The subject is nonstructural, does not involve life-safety, and is already addressed in nationally recognized standards or generally accepted industry standards.
- The subject requires its own criteria, but precedent for the new document already exists in other criteria or in the code.
- Relatively minor (noncontroversial) revisions are being proposed to an existing criteria.
The alternative process is also used by the ICC-ES staff to gain public and Evaluation Committee input on preliminary criteria drafts that are not yet ready to be sent to a committee hearing.
The alternative criteria process works this way:
- Every two months, criteria being considered under the alternative process are posted to the ICC-ES website, where they are maintained for 30 days.
- Through e-mail, ICC-ES notifies evaluation report holders, and anyone else who has requested notification, that the criteria have been posted and are available for public comment.
- Concurrently, the members of the ICC-ES Evaluation Committee are sent ballots, asked to review the posted documents, and given 30 days to submit their ballots.
- At the end of the 30-day posting, committee ballots and public comments are reviewed by the ICC-ES staff. Possible outcomes for each criteria are
- Committee approval, followed by posting of the approved document to the ICC-ES website.
- Revisions to the proposed criteria, and reposting under the alternative process either for comments only or for comments and reballoting by the Evaluation Committee.
- If serious questions are raised, a decision by the staff to take the proposal to a future public hearing of the Evaluation Committee.
Significant public comments, and all results under the alternative process, are provided on the ICC-ES web site. The web site also features an archive of past actions under the alternative process.
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