Performance-based codes: impact on international trade
Deroukakis, E.
2001 Inter-Jurisdictional Regulatory Collaboration Committee, Occasional Paper
Deroukakis, E., (2001), "Performance-based codes: impact on international trade", Inter-Jurisdictional Regulatory Collaboration Committee, Occasional Paper.
Abstract:
INTRODUCTION:
The influence of a building code is now no longer confined within national borders. Governments and industry are increasingly seeing the relationship between their internal regulatory framework and the impact that such regulations have upon their industries' ability to operate within the global economy. In part, this is a response to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) - such international trade agreements require all trade barriers to be dropped, which demands transparency of requirements. With purely prescriptive codes, when a country attempts to export their construction products, which conform to their own code requirements, into another country, it is difficult for the recipient country to understand what level of performance the exporting country's products actually provide. In contrast, using a performance-based code with clearly defined criteria, there should not be any ambiguity concerning the performance that is expected. During the last five to ten years, there has been a growing global trend for countries to develop and adopt a performancebased approach to the establishment of building codes and related standards. The global marketplace is going to increasingly apply pressure for more countries to move towards the adoption of verifiable performance codes. Following is a discussion of the impact of performance-based codes on trade in the new globalized economy.
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