The House of Representatives has approved on third and final reading House Bill (HB) 8500 mandating the country’s proposed new National Building Code.
Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said if enacted, the new law would “protect the public against multiple hazards like fire, weather disturbances, and earthquake better than ou existing building law and regulations.”
He said the present building code, embodied in Presidential Decree (PD) 1096, was enacted on Feb. 19, 1977, or more than 46 years ago, by then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
“Many developments in building standards and technologies, climate change, and disaster risk reduction and management have since taken place. It’s time that we update our law under the second Marcos administration,” he said on the measure which was approved with an overwhelming 266 votes.
He added that “a single life or structure we can save is more than worth the time, money, and effort we have put in keeping our building law abreast with best practices and regulations.”
HB 8500 is titled, “An Act regulating the planning, design, construction, occupancy, maintenance, and demolition of buildings, promoting building resilience against earthquake, fire, flood, landslide, storm, volcanic eruption, and multiple hazards within an all-hazards approach to resilience building, enacting a new Philippine Building Act, repealing for the purpose Republic Act No. 6541, “An Act to ordain and institute a National Building Code of the Philippines,” and Presidential Decree No. 1096, otherwise known as the “National Building Code of the Philippines.”
The bill’s short title is, “New Philippine Building Act.”
The measure was a consolidation of 10 related measures, two of which were authored by Rep. Romeo Momo Sr. of Surigao del Sur and Rep. Salvador Pleyto Sr. of Bulacan, who were both former undersecretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways.
“We have to make our buildings withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake,” Pleyto said, adding that buildings should be “resilient against earthquakes, fire, flood, landslide, storm, volcano, and multiple hazards.”
He said PD 1096) has to be repealed. “We have been using this obsolete law,” Pleyto noted.
He said the New Philippine Building Act which would make edifices more durable, especially in view of the fact that the country is hit by numerous disasters every year.