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This past Wednesday, May 3, the FIAI Board held it's bi-monthly meeting in Noblesville. I fully recognize that I am probably one of the few deranged people that get excited about board meetings, but I walked away from this board meeting so excited about the future of FIAI that I wanted to take a few minutes to summarize some of our topics of conversation for you this week.
Although our by-laws authorize and establish several committees, in the past 10+ years I have been on the board we have not appointed people to the committees and empowered them to perform their functions. In an effort to allow the board itself to focus on the overall direction and oversight of the organization, we have filled several committees. The Conference Committee will be headed by Ron Lipps and Steve Rowland, and focused on all of the many details surrounding the 2024 annual conference. We intend to have the location and dates selected and announced by mid-July. The Legislative/Code Committee will be focused on monitoring the legislative process, as well as the Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission, and the rule-making update process. The By-law Committee will be focused on necessary updates to our by-laws. Any by-law changes will be presented to the membership and voted on at the 2024 Annual Conference.
We are working several avenues on increasing the amount of training offered to you as an FIAI member. The next training opportunity will be an on-site training at Allegion (a door and door hardware company ) in Carmel in early June - I hope to announce a date this week. Beyond that, we are working to increase our partnerships with ICC, NFPA, and IABO (Indiana Association of Building Officials) to offer training.
We discussed, and sent, a letter to the Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission expressing concern about the outdated version (2001) of NFPA 1126, Pyrotechnics before a Proximate Audience, that the commission is re-adopting. This will hopefully lead into further discussions in the coming months on updating codes in Indiana. As you may have heard (and we will update you in the coming weeks), HEA 1575 remakes the members of the commission. This also puts a stop to any rule-making currently in process. The new commission (to be appointed by August 1) will have it's hands full to determine the order of updating codes, and how that will be handled.
We concluded our board meeting by spending time performing a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). This will help us as we plan toward a 1 and 5 year strategic plan for the organization. I can truly say I am excited about the future of FIAI. As always, if you have feedback, ideas for training, or questions, don't hesitate to reply or seek out any of our board members.
For the board, and a safer Indiana,
Darrel Cross, President
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