5000: Building Construction and Safety Code

NFPA 5000: Building Construction and Safety Code works to safeguard life, health, property, and public welfare.

Applicable to every occupancy type and building use, NFPA 5000 presents the latest requirements for construction, protection, and occupancy features needed to safeguard life, health, property, and public welfare and to minimize injuries.

The 2018 edition provides design provisions used to regulate and control the permitting, design, construction, quality of materials, use and occupancy and location of all buildings and structures and certain equipment. NFPA 5000 also addresses a broad range of natural and manmade hazards including fire, earthquake, wind, flood, and similar natural hazard and environmental events.

The 2018 edition of NFPA 5000 expands upon emerging hazards and issues.

Expanded topics include integration of new provisions dealing with building and occupant security. For example, Chapter 4 requires an assurance that any imposed security features will not interfere with the other compliance requirements. Other new provisions deal with normal building use; to minimize trips and falls in a building – and potentially prevent a measurable number of injuries – new requirements for grab bars in showers and bath tubs are included for certain occupancies with the base provisions being contained in Chapter 22.

Other significant changes include:

• An added reference that requires compliance with NFPA 4: Standard for Integrated Fire Protection and Life Safety System Testing, to address the complex arrangements between different types of fire protection systems
• An increased maximum size of the smoke compartment in a hospital and ambulatory health care occupancy, from 22,500 ft.? to 40,000 ft.?
• New requirements added to determine the need for, and type of, mass notification system (MNS) for certain occupancies
• Additional provisions for attic protection in the chapters dealing with apartments and hotels that utilize NFPA 13R sprinkler systems
• New mandates for CO detection in assembly occupancies and residential board and care occupancies
• Newly introduced terms and definitions for mall buildings
• Expanded requirements dealing with flame propagation on exterior non-bearing walls in buildings to address composite designs that include water-resistant barriers
• A new section included in the chapter on roof assemblies that addresses both the fire and structural design parameters that must be included for roof-mounted PV panels
• Two new annex sections addressing structural hardening of an exterior wall that comprise a building exit and a provision recommending basic design criteria for storm shelters
• Updated extracts from NFPA 221 in Chapter 8
• Updated extracts from NFPA 30 and NFPA 400 in Chapter 34

Keep construction up-to-code in a new era for building safety.

NFPA 5000 benefits everyone responsible for safety in the built environment, including AHJs, architects, engineers, contractors, building owners and developers, and multi-national corporations.