For the first time in the history of the United States building code, the 2024 International Building Code includes tornado wind load design criteria. The ICC's Building Safety Journal called the change “the most significant life safety change since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.” That language is not marketing. It is a quiet but seismic update to what “reasonably foreseeable” means inside a structural engineer's stamp.

The same edition pairs that change with the broader ASCE/SEI 7-22 update — significant revisions to nearly every environmental load category, expanded flood-resistant design provisions through ASCE 24-24, new risk-category guidance, and updated tornado wind-speed maps for community-based implementation in tornado-prone regions.

Tennessee sits squarely inside that map.

Most architects and engineers I talk to read the code update as a technical event. The structural team adopts it. The drawings reflect it. The permit set incorporates it. The renewal of the firm's professional liability program is treated as a separate event a month or two later.

That separation is the gap.

What changed in the standard of care

The “reasonably foreseeable” risk inventory expanded. Courts have always applied a flexible, evolving test to the design professional standard — what a reasonably prudent architect or engineer performing services under similar circumstances would do, with the skill and judgment ordinarily expected of the profession. The reference point in that test is what the profession actually does. Once a national code formally incorporates tornado wind load, the profession's reference point shifts. The next plaintiff's expert in the next failure case anywhere inside the adopted tornado map will ask one question. Did the engineer of record consider tornado loads on this structure. If the answer is no, the next question is why.

The “better than code” doctrine is sharper now. The AIA's resilience guidance, ASCE policy statements, and several state board advisories already encourage design professionals to design above code for life-safety and property-protection purposes. That guidance always sat slightly outside the legal duty. With tornado loads now inside the code, the “better than code” debate moves from voluntary to documented. A firm that chose not to design above the new minimum, on a project where above-minimum performance was clearly warranted by the occupancy or the site, needs to be able to show the documented engineering judgment that drove that decision. The file matters now in a way it did not matter a year ago.

The jurisdictional adoption patchwork is the underwriting story. Codes are adopted by state, by city, and sometimes by county. Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas are all inside the new tornado-load map. Each jurisdiction will adopt the 2024 IBC on its own timeline. A firm working across state lines is now operating against a moving target — and that target is what the professional liability underwriter is asking about on the 2026 renewal. The firm that walks into the renewal with a clear matrix of project locations, occupancy types, adopted code editions, and engineering decisions made under each one is in a fundamentally different conversation than the firm that does not.

The flood-resistant design update sits underneath this. ASCE 24-24 expanded elevation requirements, tightened floodproofing provisions, and broadened the criteria for materials and mechanical systems on flood-resistant construction. The vulnerability assessment, the attachment-method analysis, the installation procedure specification, and the labeled wall systems are not new ideas. They are now codified expectations. The professional liability claim landscape for water-damage events on flood-resistant designs is going to look very different in 2027 than it does today, and the firms that are still pricing the work as if ASCE 24-16 controls are going to find that out the hard way.

The work to meet the duty expanded

There is a deeper version of this same argument. The 2024 IBC and ASCE 7-22 are not changes to the design professional's duty. They are changes to what meeting the duty looks like in 2026. The work expanded. The documentation expanded. The exposure expanded. And the policy form — the actual E&O endorsement page that will be in front of the adjuster on the next claim — needs to be read with all of that in front of it.

PFTN was built to be the opposite of the certificate broker. Our 4-Step Strategic Process for design professionals starts with Strategic Discovery: project types, jurisdictions, occupancy mix, adopted code editions across the active project portfolio, structural and MEP delegated-design exposure, and resilience-driven scope. Risk Assessment quantifies what most brokers never look for: the actual policy form, the natural-catastrophe and pollution endorsement language, the contract indemnity exposure across multi-state work, and the gap between the firm's documented engineering judgment and the renewal application narrative. Solution Design pairs the right E&O form with the right contractual liability extension and the right cyber form. Ongoing Optimization re-checks the alignment as more jurisdictions adopt the 2024 IBC.

The code expanded the standard of care. The discipline is to expand the documentation, the workflow, and the insurance conversation at the same time.

The shift starts with one conversation — and preferably long before the next renewal hits.

— Ryan Mefford, President & Risk Advisor