U.S. Representative’s local visit recognizes testing procedures and their importance to conformity assessment and building safety.
Nappanee, IN – The ICC NTA Midwest Testing Laboratory welcomed Congressman Rudy Yakym for a campus tour and education on impact testing as it relates to the resilience of building materials relative to hurricanes and tornadoes, which are common in many parts of the country.
NTA staff explain the air cannon impact test to Rep. Yakym at the Indiana lab facility.
NTA has a rich history in Nappanee (which wholly resides within Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District which Yakym represents), operating as a business there since 1976. The company employs 199 staff at its Nappanee facility, plus 25 at the Goshen lab and 10 at the large-scale fire testing lab in Bryan, Texas.
The visit included a live demonstration of an impact test procedure, commonly used in test standards like TAS 201 and ASTM E1886/E1996, to simulate windborne debris during a hurricane event by shooting a 2×4 missile from an air cannon at a building product/assembly designed for impact resistance. The minimum missile speed is 34 miles per hour (MPH), or 50 feet per second.
Among hundreds of other building product tests, the ICC NTA Nappanee lab also performs ANSI/ICC-500 storm shelter testing (adopted by FEMA). This standard uses the same test equipment and evaluates impact resistance of storm shelters from tornadoes at designed wind speeds of up to 250 MPH, using a missile speed of 100 MPH (147 feet per second).
Pictured from left to right: Lisa Berger, Government Relations Manager; Justin Mann, Lab Operations Manager; Phil Jones, NTA President; Rudy Yakym, U.S. Representative; David Tompos, Executive VP Conformity Assessment; Steven Saffell, VP Construction Services
“As part of the Code Council family, NTA is dedicated to innovation and building safety,” said Executive Vice President of the ICC Conformity Assessment group David Tompos. “Construction methods are evolving all the time, and we are always happy to educate stakeholders of any kind on our testing and evaluation services and how they play a key role in building safety.”
“For policymakers, having a firsthand look at state-of-the-art facilities like these is essential to producing commonsense solutions that help our constituents,” said Representative Rudy Yakym (IN-02). “I appreciate the good men and women at ICC NTA in Nappanee for the economic opportunity they are providing to Hoosiers and their commitment to excellence in building up our District’s manufacturing base.”
ICC NTA anticipates a future expansion of its footprint in Indiana in order to better provide third-party testing, broader support of off-site construction, third-party plan review, and conformity assessment services.
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About NTA
As an accredited third-party agency and part of the ICC family of solutions, ICC NTA provides testing, inspection, engineering, and plan review services as well as independent quality and standards compliance verification for building product manufacturers. ICC NTA serves residential and commercial builders, code officials, manufacturers, and suppliers throughout the building industry.
In 2019, NTA was acquired by the International Code Council and became ICC NTA, LLC. NTA is part of the ICC Conformity Assessment Solutions group which includes ICC-ES.
About ICC-ES
ICC Evaluation Service (ICC-ES) is the leading evaluation service for innovative building materials, components and systems. ICC-ES Evaluation Reports (ESRs), Building Product Listings and PMG Listings provide evidence that products and systems meet requirements of codes and technical standards worldwide, including the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and the MENA region. ICC-ES is a member of the ICC family of solutions.
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