As part of its strategic goal to increase the availability of decent, safe, and affordable housing in American communities, HUD has been involved in ongoing efforts to advance housing technology through its administration of the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH). This Federal initiative works to accelerate the creation and widespread use of advanced technologies to radically improve the quality, durability, environmental performance, energy efficiency, disaster resistance, and affordability of our Nation’s housing. New building products and technology can contribute to the development of safer, higher quality, and more disaster-resistant housing.
This report explains how regulatory activities affect new building technology research, development, and deployment and how to apply regulatory information to develop and deploy building technologies. Without this technology, building technology developers may devote resources to research and development of a building technology only to discover too late that the technology does not meet building regulations and therefore must be tested, retested, or redesigned or that they must address another issue that is impeding or preventing the technology’s deployment.
Applying this information will build an awareness of the need to perform technology acceptance planning—the integration of parallel rather than sequential efforts to address building regulations and technology development. By using the approaches in this report, product innovators and proponents will better understand the issues associated with codes and standards and be better prepared to develop successful strategies to bring new products to the marketplace. These new products will, in turn, contribute to the development of safer, better, and more affordable housing for all Americans.