Understanding Building Codes: How They Save Lives and Protect Communities

Building codes don't just tell you how to build. They encode what we've learned from disasters.
After every major earthquake, hurricane, flood, or fire, engineers and code officials study what happened. They look at which buildings held and which ones didn't. They track failures back to design decisions, construction practices, or code gaps. And then they update the standards.
That process is slow, incremental, and unglamorous. It also saves lives.
This week's International Code Council's Building Safety Month theme, Prepared to Protect, is about that cycle: building in resilience before disaster strikes, not after.
At Burnham, we help project teams understand what those requirements mean in practice.
#BuildingSafetyMonth2026 #BuiltToLast