NFPA 5000 Building Construction and Safety Code

Be prepared to help protect lives and property from new hazards in the built environment with NFPA 5000®, 2021 edition.

In the ever-evolving building and construction industry, it's critical to keep pace with the latest requirements for minimizing injuries and safeguarding life, health, property, and public welfare. NFPA 5000, Building Construction and Safety Code®, offers provisions for regulating and controlling the permitting, design, construction, quality of materials, and use, occupancy, and location of buildings, structures, and specific equipment.

Created to fill the gap in the code regime for a building code developed using American National Standards Institute procedures, NFPA 5000 is a vital resource for architects, engineers, authorities having jurisdiction, contractors, building owners and developers, multinational companies, and anyone with responsibilities for safety in the built environment. The code addresses natural and human-made dangers such as fire, flood, earthquake, wind, and related natural hazards and environmental concerns.

The 2021 edition of the Building Construction and Safety Code provides the information you need to help improve public safety and compliance today and into the future.

NFPA 5000 is updated in response to, and, in some cases, in anticipation of, emerging technologies or as society looks to code developers to address new hazards. The 2021 edition features updates based on emerging trends and safety concerns, such as security, new building materials, and exterior wall testing.

Critical changes include:

• New Chapter 56 on security systems and features to outline security requirements for the built environment with references to NFPA 730, NFPA 731, and NFPA 914. The chapters on educational occupancies and daycare occupancies also require the use of this new chapter.
• Revisions to reaffirm wind loads and design loads based on ASCE 7-16 as well as the section on vegetative roof systems
• Significant updates to the building height/area restrictions and testing requirements for specific materials
• New options, height increases, and area increases for mass timber construction
• Revisions to testing requirements and height limitations in the sections on light-transmitting plastic wall panels and metal composite materials (MCM)
• Updates to the requirements for fire-retardant-treated wood
• Changes to align with updates in referenced concrete standards and seismic standards
• Reference added to NFPA 855 in Chapter 55 relating to energy storage systems
• Inclusion of criteria for mass notification risk assessments
• Updated provisions in Chapter 18 specifying all daycare occupancies be sprinklered
• New requirements for low-frequency alarm signals in sleeping rooms of hotels, dormitories, and apartment buildings per NFPA 72®

2021 (9781455926541)