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After @pipedreaming.bsky.social got done with his presentation on single-stair venting a few days ago, one of the committee members said, exasperatedly, “I didn’t realize I was signing up for this” – as in, he didn’t realize he’d be volunteering his time to review such a big proposal. I worry…

Which committee is this? I thought this was a meeting of CACs (not the committees that vote at the code hearings), right? The voting coms DO largely keep up, tho they divide the work among "leads." The CACs have become vehicles for faux consensus, and I think this is how and why.

Yeah it was PMGCAC. That said, it’s going to be a similar story on the plumbing code development committee, no? Volunteers who are presented with hundreds of proposals, spending days in person hearing testimony and who knows how long reviewing the written reason statements ahead of time. The…

…committee members’ time will be “funded” either by a private entity with a vested interest, a government entity whose primary mission is not developing code, or out of their own pocket.

In a way, single-stair was easy because they were pressured by governments to pass it, the text was not that long, the proposal was extremely conservative by global standards, and frankly the science of egress is barely science at all, so they could just go on vibes.

Yeah, and he/we should try to build consensus for it. A CAC is not the only way to do that. ASME or other orgs will be more persuasive (I think?), and a CAC is more likely to follow than lead. At least that's my experience with BCAC.

You did say this about CACs in SF and I’m starting to see it. Do you have a sense of what is behind the CACs? Is it the ICC trying to take over the work/legitimacy of professional societies? Something else?