The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has revised its procedures to streamline approval of the National Electrical Code (NEC) at the association’s annual meeting, scheduled for June 4–7, 2007, in Boston.

The new procedures require advance notice of the intent to make a motion at the Technical Committee Report (TCR) session held as part of the NFPA annual meeting. The purpose of this rule change is to prevent last-minute appeals of the NEC and other NFPA codes and standards, and establish the meeting agenda in advance.

Historically, such appeals (known as “floor actions”) have been filed by interests unhappy with the decisions of Code-Making Panels and other NFPA standards committees. Such floor actions were often a last-ditch attempt to change the content of documents after regular opportunities for public review and comment had ended.

But now, NFPA has changed its Regulations Governing Committee Projects to require that a “Notice of Intent to Make a Motion,” or NITMAM, be filed well before the annual meeting. May 4, 2007, is the deadline to file NITMAM related to approval of the 2008 NEC.

“We welcome this rule change by NFPA,” said Brooke Stauffer, executive director for standards and safety at The National Electrical Contractors Association. “The NITMAM process should speed up the processing of the National Electrical Code and other documents, while making the final approval process fairer for everybody.”          EC