<His Excellency the Minister of Commerce and Investment and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization, Dr. Majid bin Abdullah Al-Qasabi, described the Saudi Building Code as one of the most important pillars in supporting the national economy and enhancing the safety of the citizen in addition to its pivotal role in protecting the rights of contractors.

Building Code Achieves Quality and Safety

<During his participation in the opening of the first introductory workshop for the Saudi Building Code, which was held at the headquarters of the Standards Authority in Riyadh with the wide participation of members and representatives of the technical teams in the National Committee for the Saudi Building Code, and a number of specialists and interested parties, he stressed that the code represents a qualitative addition to the country and the citizen, with its details, technical requirements and executive and legal requirements, achieving more safety rates in the construction and building sector in the Kingdom, and expressed his sincere thanks to all representatives of government agencies participating in the workshop, asking God to crown their work with success and accomplish the code work with quality

Saudi Code is a reference for the Gulf countries

For his part, the Chairman of the National Committee for the Saudi Building Code, Dr. Saad bin Othman Al-Qasabi, praised the issuance of the Royal Decree No. (M/43) on 26/4/1438 H, which requires the application of the code to all construction and building sectors, indicating that work is underway to complete the code application plan and determine the date of mandatory application, and explained that the Saudi Building Code is the reference code for the Gulf Building Code by agreement of all GSO member states.

<Dr. Al-Qasabi revealed that the National Building Code Committee is working diligently to prepare for the implementation phase through integrated axes to approve the regulations by preparing the executive regulations of the code system and starting to prepare the regulation of classification of violations, in addition to the training and awareness axis through coordination with stakeholders from the government and private sectors to provide training and awareness in the field of code, while the committee is also working on studying the structure of the code through several workshops to follow the processes of updating and development of code requirements, and the national committee works to address gaps in the current national system for building code to reach the

Revision and development of the building code

<The introductory workshop reviewed the work of the National Committee for the Saudi Building Code, the project of preparing executive regulations and classifying violations, in addition to introducing the work of 11 sub-committees involved in the preparation, review and development of the code in which more than 14 government agencies participate, including the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Trade and Investment, Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization, Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu and Saudi Institution of Engineers The National Building Code Committee is currently working on finalizing the code update phase and preparing for the second workshop in which the technical outputs of the working groups will be presented to specialists from the public and private sector in various fields, while the third introductory workshop will be dedicated to all interested parties, as these workshops are expected to be completed within the next few months.