Case Studies - Washington State Energy Code

Training and Publication Support for the Residential Code

Executive Summary

On July 1, 1991, Washington State began enforcing the requirements of the revised Washington State Energy Code, based on the Model Conservation Standards. The Washington State Energy Office (WSEO), a non-regulatory state agency, was awarded the task of providing support for the code.

The Washington State Energy Code Program (WSEC) provided financial and technical support to ensure the successful implementation of the Energy Code. Part of this support included training and code related publications. The goal was to provide code officials, builders and other parties in the construction industry with increased knowledge of energy code requirements and compliance methods, leading to higher levels of compliance and energy savings.

The Energy Extension Service Division of WSEO developed and delivered a series of training sessions to over 10,000 members of the shelter industry over a five year period (1991-96). The breakdown in attendance was as follows:

Builders and Subcontractors	4744
Code Officials	4131
Building Material Suppliers	1007
Architects and Designers	117
Vocational School Instructors	56
Utility staff	29
Lighting Manufacturer's Representatives	20

The Energy Extension also published and distributed twenty separate code publications to code jurisdictions, material suppliers, builders, subcontractors, utilities, and the design community.

While it is difficult to directly measure the impact of training on code compliance, ninety percent of building officials interviewed rated the WSEC training effort as good to excellent. In addition, a monitoring study showed that code compliance increased steadily over the life of the WSEC program. It can be assumed that the training effort was partly responsible for the high level of code compliance.

Builders and sub-contractors did not provide feedback on the training. Attendance at the builder training sessions was lower than expected, though many builders did obtain necessary code information from code related publications.

Our training and publication experience provides us with several lessons:

Involve the design community - providing on-site training to architects and designers proved to be an effective method of integrating code requirements into the planning process.
Utilize existing relationships - taking advantage of the connection between builders and building material suppliers through supplier sponsored "builder's breakfasts" proved to be an effective way to bring builders into the training process.
Publications are invaluable - the Plan Review and Inspection Checklist helped reduce the learning curve for builders, plans examiners and field inspectors. Energy Code fact sheets proved to be an easy and effective way of communicating details of the code to a wide audience. The Builder's Field Guide provided useful construction detail for builders and other interested parties. These publications were available through the Residential Energy Code Hotline, located at the Washington State Energy Office.
Use a multi-faceted approach to reach builders and subcontractors - throughout the program, turnout at builder training sessions was less than was hoped for. Nevertheless, many builders and subcontractors obtained code information from such publications as the Builder's Field Guide and the Energy Code Fact sheets.
Monitoring reinforces training efforts - the Washington State Energy Code Monitoring Program provided important feedback to help refine the training effort.