STATE BUILDING CODE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD (SBCTRB)

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The State Building Code Technical Review Board’s (SBCTRB) primary purpose is to hear appeals from enforcement actions under the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code, Virginia Statewide Fire Prevention Code, Virginia Industrialized Building Safety Regulations, and Virginia Amusement Device Regulations. Applicants for appeals are generally those persons or entities regulated under the building and fire codes and who disagree with an enforcement action. The codes require the filing of an appeal within a certain time period and generally an appeal must first be made to a local government appeals board and then to the SBCTRB if relief is not granted by the local board. Both the building and fire codes contain provisions advising of the right to appeal and directing aggrieved parties to the appropriate appeals board.

INTERPRETATIONS

A secondary function of the SBCTRB is to provide interpretations to the provisions of the USBC and SFPC and make recommendations to the Virginia Board of Housing and Community Development for future modifications, amendment, or repeal of such provisions. Interpretation requests may be submitted by any code enforcement personnel with approval from the corresponding building, maintenance or fire official. Please be advised that if there is an existing appeal pending on the subject of the interpretation, or likely to be an appeal, the review board may not consider the interpretation request.

Interpretation requests may be submitted to the Department of Housing and Community Development, State Building Codes Office at 600 East Main Street, Suite 300, Richmond, Virginia 23219 or online by submitting the Request for Interpretation form to sbco@dhcd.virginia.gov.

APPEALS

The timeframes for processing appeals are subject to the SBCTRB continuation policy, which permits the parties to agree to continue appeal proceedings. The timeframes for processing appeals may not be able to be met if multiple appeals are received by the office of SBCTRB within a short span of time. In that case, processing will be in the order of the receipt of the appeals.