Technical building regulations in EU countries: a comparison of their organization and formulation.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare technical building regulations in European Union (EU) countries. Three research questions are addressed: what are the main differences and similarities? what are the main types of organization and formulation? what are the main trends and developments? The following tasks were carried out in order to provide an answer to these questions: preparing a questionnaire and obtaining answers from experts of EU countries, collecting and analysing main building regulations, and comparing results. The results are that, in the majority of the EU countries, central authorities are involved in setting technical building regulations, however the involvement of regional and local authorities varies. Technical building regulations can be set in one main document, a coordinated group of documents or separated legal documents. The formulation adopted for most subjects is performance based, combined with functional or prescriptive requirements for specific subjects. Only in England and Wales have technical building regulations a pure functional formulation. Few countries have official documents with deemed to satisfy solutions. The building regulations include the main subjects (i.e. safety, health, practicability and energy saving), but several countries have no requirements on environmental protection. In the majority of the EU countries, direct references to specific standards are made, but standards are not accessible free of charge. There is not a pattern in the way that building regulations apply to construction works in existing buildings. The main conclusions drawn from the study were that there are five main types of organization and formulation of technical building regulations in the EU countries, as follows: 1) one document with functional requirements and a coordinated group of documents with deemed to satisfy solutions; 2) one document with performance requirements; 3) one document with prescriptive requirements and new performance regulations on specific subjects; 4) a set of coordinated documents with performance requirements; and, 5) separated legal documents mainly with performance requirements combined with some prescriptive requirements. Although there are exceptions, a regional distribution was observed in the countries that adopt each type.