Building codes are notoriously slow to absorb new construction methods, but two developments this month suggest the gap is narrowing on multiple fronts. Modular and off-site construction finally has a consistent code framework in the 2027 I-Codes, and a new research report makes the case that structural codes are the next frontier for embodied carbon reduction. Those threads run alongside updates to head protection standards, a suite of ASTM worker safety tools and a milestone for alternative energy.
A win for off-site construction
One persistent friction point for modular and panelized construction has been the absence of a uniform approval framework across jurisdictions. A project manufactured in one state and installed in another could face entirely different review processes at each end. The 2027 I-Codes could change that.
The new editions of the International Code Council’s International Building Code and International Residential Code incorporate the ICC/MBI 1200 series (standards 1200, 1205, and 1210), which together establish a common framework for how off-site building components are reviewed and approved. Seven states have already adopted the ICC/MBI standards, with Maine and New Hampshire among the most recent. The standards have also been incorporated into the Department of War’s Uniform Facilities Criteria for military construction, reflecting the department’s interest in scaling off-site methods for defense projects.
Ryan Colker, ICC’s executive director of energy, resilience and innovation, said the incorporation is meant to reduce barriers that have historically slowed projects even when the construction method itself was well-suited to the task. That means a single compliance path, rather than jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction negotiation, becomes available wherever the 2027 I-Codes are adopted.
Structural codes enter the embodied carbon conversation
A report from the first phase of the Code Updates for Reduction of Embodied Carbon project, known as CURE, offers the most systematic effort to date to connect structural building codes to carbon outcomes. The work was led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and funded by the Pankow Foundation, along with the ACI Foundation (a non-profit subsidiary of the American Concrete Institute), the American Institute of Steel Construction, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Structural Engineering Institute, the Magnusson Klemencic Associates Foundation, and the National Council of Structural Engineers Association Foundation.
The Phase 1 report identifies 11 priority code changes for the committees that govern ACI 318 (structural concrete), AISC 360 (structural steel) and ASCE 7 (design loads). The proposed changes reduce embodied carbon either by enabling smaller required section sizes or by allowing lower design-strength concrete, which reduces the carbon intensity of the mix. Some proposals, if adopted, could reduce a structure’s embodied carbon by as much as 12% against current code baselines. The authors note that reductions of even 1 to 3% are meaningful given the scale of the building industry’s total output.
The report frames structural engineers, rather than architects or owners, as the profession with the most direct leverage over embodied carbon in a building’s structure. Each proposal is presented with an estimated impact and a description of the research needed to support a formal code change proposal, and the authors describe the changes as achievable in the near term with targeted, funded work.
New concrete PCR changes how carbon gets counted
Tying directly to the CURE project’s ambitions is a change in how the carbon performance of concrete gets measured and reported. The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, through NSF International, published NSF 1112-26 — Version 3 of the Product Category Rule for concrete environmental product declarations. The update, valid through April 30, 2031, is the result of two years of work involving producers, government agencies, trade associations and life cycle analysis experts.
An EPD functions roughly like a nutritional label for a concrete mix’s environmental footprint. What controls how that label is produced is the PCR, and the update to Version 3 changes several of the accounting rules. The new version expands scope and definitions, incorporates newer supplementary cementitious material and cement technologies, improves the treatment of portable batch plants and mobile volumetric mixers, which previously lacked a clear calculation path, and tightens data quality requirements.
Under federal and state Buy Clean laws, bids on public infrastructure projects require an EPD produced under the current valid PCR. As EPDs generated under the prior Version 2.3 expire, contractors will need to request updated Version 3-compliant EPDs from their ready-mix suppliers. NRMCA’s Tiffany Reed-Villarreal framed the revision as essential infrastructure for the industry’s credibility on carbon. Without consistent accounting rules across producers, the numbers reported on EPDs aren’t reliably comparable.
However, because Version 3 tightens the data consistency requirements for upstream cement and aggregate suppliers, the carbon scores of some standard concrete mixes may shift slightly. Not because the mix changed, but because the accounting rules did.
Head protection standard revised for evolving jobsite risks
The International Safety Equipment Association published a revised American National Standard for Industrial Head Protection, ANSI/ISEA Z89.1-2026, updating a standard that governs how hard hats and safety helmets are classified, tested, and marked.
The revision does not render existing compliant equipment obsolete. It retains the established Type and Class designations for impact, penetration, and electrical protection. What it adds is a new optional “+” designation that identifies head protection tested beyond the base standard for chin strap retention, helmet retention under movement, and multi-point impact coverage on the front, rear, and sides. The “+” marking also includes verified performance for reverse wearing, a real-world practice common in trades work that previous editions didn’t explicitly address.
ISEA also updated the visibility marking system. What was previously labeled “High Visibility (HV)” becomes “Enhanced Visibility (EV)” to clarify that head protection is evaluated under different criteria than high-visibility apparel governed by ANSI/ISEA 107. The change addresses a persistent source of confusion among safety professionals selecting equipment across both product categories.
ISEA CEO Cam Mackey described the update as more than a routine revision, citing nearly 700 worker fatalities attributed to head injuries over the past year. The revision reflects pressure from major employers who have moved beyond minimum requirements and needed a standardized framework to describe and evaluate the enhanced protection they’re already mandating on their sites.
A suite for serious injury prevention
ASTM’s occupational health and safety committee (E34) has updated a suite of three related standards that together create a framework for moving beyond incident counting toward actual risk reduction.
E2920 establishes how workplace injuries and illnesses are recorded and categorized by severity across four levels, from fatal and serious injury events down to minor incidents and near misses. Its companion, E3519, extends the same recording framework to non-injury events — fires, environmental releases, and business interruptions — that carry the same lethal potential without always producing a recordable injury. Both standards address what safety professionals have long recognized as a gap in the mandatory OSHA reporting system: that it tracks whether incidents occurred and were recorded, but not how close a near miss came to causing a fatality.
E3529 is the forward-looking piece of the suite. It provides a risk identification and prioritization framework specifically designed for serious injury and fatality hazards, allowing organizations to install safeguards before an incident happens rather than after.
A fourth standard, WK92350, is in development and would create a framework for assessing worker engagement in safety programs from the shop floor to the executive level. ASTM member Marty Stern of Colgate-Palmolive framed the goal as shifting safety culture from top-down compliance toward a system that actively draws on the knowledge of workers who encounter hazards directly.
Alternative energy standards mark a milestone
In May 2026, utility-scale solar plants in the US generated more electricity than coal-fired plants for the first time — 12.8% of national output versus coal’s 12.2%. ASTM’s Standardization News covers how the organization’s committees are building the standards infrastructure that underlies the transition.
On the solar side, ASTM’s E44 committee maintains standards for testing material absorptance, reflectance, and transmittance (E903), and for sampling retired PV modules to determine toxicity before disposal (E3325) — an increasingly active issue as the earliest large-scale solar installations approach end of life. On wind, the D02 committee’s lubricant standards, including D1092 and D1831, govern the greases that must perform reliably in wind turbine gearboxes across temperature ranges from -20° to 120°F. On hydrogen, the D03 committee’s nine active standards address sampling and purity testing for hydrogen fuel, including methods for detecting trace gaseous contaminants via FTIR spectroscopy.
For nuclear, the C26 committee revised standard C1934 in 2025 to address uranium hexafluoride enriched at 5 to 8 percent 235U and published new standard C1962 covering 8 to 20 percent enrichment levels — specifications that support advanced reactor designs requiring higher-enriched fuel for longer operational cycles. The DOE announced in July that a fourth authorized nuclear reactor design in the U.S. had reached criticality, driven in part by the 2025 executive order aimed at reinvigorating the domestic nuclear industrial base.
Quantum sensors sharpen nuclear material accounting
Researchers using quantum sensors developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have measured X-ray emissions from uranium, plutonium, and neptunium with precision that reduces previous measurement uncertainty by factors of three to eight. The sensors operate at temperatures just above absolute zero, where even the energy of a single incoming photon produces a detectable resistance change in a superconducting film.
The practical application is nuclear safeguards. Verifying enrichment levels and accounting for nuclear material at power plants and weapons facilities requires distinguishing X-ray emissions from overlapping gamma-ray signals, a historically difficult measurement problem. NIST physicist Jonathan Dean said the new measurements directly support international safeguards work by enabling more precise material accounting. NIST has already installed TES detectors at three DOE national laboratories, with additional deployments at research facilities including Argonne, Brookhaven, SLAC and CERN.
If you sit on a code or standards committee and would like to have your work featured in the next CodeWatch, email Evan Milberg at [email protected].