National Construction Safety Team Enhancement Act of 2024

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of my bill, the National Construction Safety Team Enhancement Act of 2024.

Last year, there was massive flooding along California's central coast, which left communities really across the State vulnerable. In my district, the Pajaro River's levee failed, forcing over 1,500 people to evacuate and putting thousands of homes at risk. Many of them were flooded.

In May 2023, I joined Representative Panetta, Senator Padilla, and the late Senator Feinstein in asking the Army Corps of Engineers to provide emergency assistance to help with the levee.

Last August, the Biden-Harris administration heeded our call to action and committed $20 million to repair the levee and address erosion on the left bank of the Pajaro River. That has now been concluded, and these communities have been protected, at least with the emergency repairs.

As with this small rural community in my own district, the climate crisis continues to put massive strains on aging infrastructure across the United States.

While recovery and reconstruction efforts continue, we have to do more to understand the causes of destructive and life-threatening events, like the Pajaro River levee failure, to make sure it doesn't happen again. Unfortunately, there's no agency currently authorized to conduct thorough technical investigations of failure of general infrastructure, like levees, dikes, bridges, or dams.

When it comes to buildings, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has been charged by Congress with conducting investigations in order to improve the building codes and standards used to design and maintain them. The National Construction Safety Team, or NCST, dispatches experts to work alongside other agencies to investigate major building disasters, to improve the scientific understanding around these failures, and to prevent future catastrophes.

This bill expands NCST's existing authority to include investigations of general infrastructure failures. These teams will investigate incidents involving other structures that we also rely on every day in order to improve the safety and resilience of American communities.

The tragic destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge into the mouth of the Patapsco River in Baltimore underscores the immediate need for this legislation. The impact of that catastrophe is being felt all across the United States.

NIST needs the authority to investigate major infrastructure failures so that they may improve future engineering standards and building codes to guard against such failures in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Lucas for his partnership on this bill and so many other things.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this timely and necessary legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stevens), my colleague on the Science Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

In closing, I am proud of this bill. If we make this the law, America will be safer, full stop. I am happy that we were able to do it on a bipartisan basis, and I am looking forward to quick action in the Senate.

I thank again the chairman of the committee, Mr. Lucas, for his collaboration on this and so many other things.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4143) to amend the National Construction Safety Team Act to enable the National Institute of Standards and Technology to investigate structures other than buildings to inform the development of engineering standards, best practices, and building codes related to such structures, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 4143, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4143, the National Construction Safety Team Enhancement Act of 2024, offered by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

The National Construction Safety Team, or NCST, is a program run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to investigate major building disasters and failures so that we can develop better construction standards in the future.

Following NIST's investigation of the Twin Towers collapse after 9/ 11, they issued recommendations that have significantly impacted how we design and construct buildings, making them safer and more durable.

Currently, NIST is investigating the 2021 collapse of the Surfside condominiums in south Florida, which killed nearly 100 people.

While NIST does exceptional work in these investigations, their scope is limited to building failures. This bill will

expand that authority to general infrastructure failures, which currently are not investigated in this way.

This is a smart bill that will ensure that we can utilize NIST's unique expertise to better understand any failures in roads, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure and, most importantly, develop best practices and guidances so that we can avert future tragedies.

This legislation builds off the authorities NIST received after 9/11 to conduct technical investigations of building failures and ensures these efforts do not impede on criminal or other law enforcement investigations.

I thank Ranking Member Lofgren for introducing this bill along with Chairman Lucas.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

This is a commonsense, practical policy that supports science and innovation to improve people's lives. I encourage my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation to ensure that NIST can utilize its unique expertise to conduct these technical investigations on major failures to our infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank again Ranking Member Lofgren, particularly in light of her remarkable leadership in crafting and introducing this bill. I join both of my colleagues to shine a light on the deep and critical importance of H.R. 4143, the National Construction Safety Team Enhancement Act.

We all know that NIST is the little engine that could within our Federal Government, doing so much with little resources and showing the true benefit of where and how we invest taxpayer dollars for the greater implications of society and safety. We know that the National Construction Safety Team within NIST is modeled after the National Transportation Safety Team, both expert operations that get dispatched to the site of major building disasters to investigate the cause and identify preventive solutions.

However, the existing authority only extends to buildings, and it leaves out major swaths of our built environment, as the ranking member mentioned, like bridges and levees, which, just frankly, leaves our Nation vulnerable.

This legislation will expand the safety team's existing authority to better investigate those failures of infrastructure in structures other than buildings.

This really couldn't come at a more important time. I know this is deeply critical to residents in Michigan. We want to be in a place where we are creating resilient structures and recognizing some of the damaging impacts of climate change and rising sea levels. That is the extreme weather environment we are in.

I thank the ranking member and all on the Science Committee. I am proud to be a cosponsor of this bill and eager to see it passed in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, due to a medical procedure and at the advice of my doctor, I was unable to cast my votes today in the House of Representatives. Had I been present, I would have voted: YEA on Roll Call No. 187, on suspending the Rules and passing H.R. 8289; YEA on Roll Call No. 188, on the motion to table H. Res. 1209; NAY on Roll Call No. 189, on passage of H.J. Res. 109; YEA on Roll Call No. 190, on the motion to recommit H.R. 2925; NAY on Roll Call No. 191, on passage of H.R. 2925; YEA on Roll Call No. 192, on the motion to recommit H.R. 7109; NAY on Roll Call No. 193, on passage of H.R. 7109; YEA on Roll Call No. 194, on suspending the Rules and passing the House Amendment to S. 870; and YEA on Roll Call No. 195, on suspending the Rules and passing H.R. 4143, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, for personal reasons, I was unable to make votes. Had I been present, I would have voted:

YEA on Roll Call No. 187, YEA on Roll Call No. 188, NAY on Roll Call No. 189, YEA on Roll Call No. 190, NAY on Roll Call No. 191, YEA on Roll Call No. 192, NAY on Roll Call No. 193, YEA on Roll Call No. 194, and YEA on Roll Call No. 195.

personal Explanation