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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires technical support services that will provide FEMA seismic and related multi-hazard technical assistance as they are identified by FEMA. Required support includes architectural and engineering (A&E) Subject Matter Expert technical assistance, development of technical design and construction guidance products, support disseminating the A&E products, and related outreach efforts. These voluntary resource guidance products present criteria for the design, construction, upgrade, and function of buildings subject to earthquake ground motions to minimize the hazard to life for all buildings, increase the expected performance of higher occupancy structures, and improve the capability of essential facilities to function during and after earthquakes anywhere in the United States. They ultimately serve as the basis for future changes to the nation’s building codes and consensus standards, and to improve the nation’s resiliency in reducing future earthquake losses.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has the goal of reducing the everincreasing cost that disasters inflict on our country. Preventing losses before they happen by designing and building a community’s structures to withstand anticipated forces from these hazards is one of the key components of mitigation. Mitigation is the only truly effective way of reducing the cost of these disasters and advance the whole of community concept. As part of its responsibilities mandated under the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), and in accordance with the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 (PL 94-125 as amended), FEMA is charged with supporting mitigation activities necessary to improve technical quality in the field of earthquake engineering. The primary method of addressing this charge has been supporting the investigation of seismic and seismic-related multi-hazard technical issues as they are identified by FEMA, problemfocused study of seismic technical issues as they are identified by research and/or postdisaster field studies, the development and publication of technical design and construction guidance products, the dissemination of these products, and the support of various related training and/or outreach efforts based on these products. Because NEHRP is Congressionally authorized and mandated to be a national program, the development of NEHRP technical design guidance products must be done in a manner that will be acceptable to and utilized by the nation’s engineering and design communities as well as the nation’s model building code and consensus standards organizations. This will require contracting with a nationally recognized engineering development organization that is intimately familiar with seismic research, design and construction, training and outreach, as well as the NEHRP, its history, FEMA’s responsibilities, and the issues it must address. FEMA has had considerable success in attracting some of the best earthquake engineers and scientists to assist in the development of these FEMA resource products. Because of this, our products have been widely used by practicing design professionals and building officials, and the techniques and technologies contained in these products are being incorporated into national model building codes and consensus and industry standards. The fact that the International Building Code (IBC) and the nationally recognized standards, American Society of Civil Engineers/Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE/SEI) 7 Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and other Structures, and ASCE/SEI 41 Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Buildings have all revised their seismic requirements to incorporate material from our resource products is one of the premier successes of the NEHRP and FEMA.

One example of these types of products is the NEHRP Recommended Seismic Provisions for New Buildings and Other Structures, which presents the minimum criteria for the design and construction of buildings considered prudent and economically justifiable for the protection of life safety in buildings subject to earthquakes anywhere in the United States. This publication serves as the basis for the seismic provisions of the International Building Code and the International Residential Code. A second example is a current project to develop input for the current update cycle of ASCE/SEI 41, Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Buildings. This project, referred to as ATC-140, provides extensive input on a series of technical issues that need to be updated within ASCE/SEI 41. Another example of the development of a primary product is the Performance Based Seismic Design (PBSD) Guidelines Project and the seven volume FEMA series, Seismic Performance Assessment of Buildings (FEMA P-58). PBSD is one of the more promising methodologies that can be used to reduce damages from an earthquake or other similar hazard over and above the current life safety target of the nation’s current building codes. Current building codes for the design of new buildings are prescriptive in nature and are intended principally to provide for a life-safety level of protection when the design-level event such as an earthquake occurs. While current codes are intended to produce buildings that meet a lifesafety performance level for a specified level of ground shaking, they do not provide a procedure that enables the designer to determine if other higher performance levels will be achieved or exceeded. During a design level earthquake, a code-designed building could achieve the goal of preventing the loss of life or life-threatening injury to the occupants but could still sustain extensive structural and nonstructural damage and be out of service for an extended period. In some cases, the damage may be too costly to repair, with demolition being the only option. PBSD is a concept that permits the design of buildings with a realistic and reliable understanding of the risk of life, occupancy and economic loss that may occur in future earthquakes. PBSD is based on an evaluation of a building’s design to determine the

probability of experiencing different types of losses, considering the range of potential earthquake events that may affect the facility. With the completion of the FEMA P-58 series, the current STGDS contract has been utilized to provide additional guidance and training on the use of PBSD guidelines.

FEMA also has similar responsibilities under the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP) for wind-related technical guidance development tasks including design and construction guidance for complying with existing wind codes and standards, guidance for tornado or hurricane storm shelters and guidance for best available refuge. Accordingly, the Contractor shall provide resources with wind engineering expertise who can provide these technical services.