50-60-201. Purpose of state building code. The state building code must be designed to effectuate the general purposes of parts 1 through 4 and the following specific objectives and standards to:

(1) provide reasonably uniform standards and requirements for construction and construction materials consistent with accepted standards of design, engineering, and fire prevention practices;

(2) permit to the fullest extent feasible the use of modern technical methods, devices, and improvements that tend to reduce the cost of construction consistent with reasonable requirements for the health and safety of the occupants or users of buildings and, consistent with the conservation of energy, by design requirements and criteria that will result in the efficient use of energy, whether used directly or in a refined form, in buildings;

(3) eliminate restrictive, obsolete, conflicting, and unnecessary building regulations and requirements that tend to unnecessarily increase construction costs, unnecessarily prevent the use of proven new materials that have been found adequate through experience or testing, or provide unwarranted preferential treatment to types or classes of materials, products, or methods of construction;

(4) ensure that any newly constructed public buildings and certain altered public buildings are readily accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities, according to the principles applicable to accessibility to public buildings for persons with disabilities in the state building code;

(5) ensure statewide uniformity in the inspection and enforcement of exterior features of all newly constructed public buildings and certain altered public buildings, including building sites, for physical accessibility to people with disabilities;

(6) encourage efficiencies of design and insulation that enable buildings to be heated in the winter with the least possible quantities of energy and to be kept cool in the summer without air-conditioning equipment or with the least possible use of the equipment;

(7) encourage efficiencies and criteria directed toward design of building envelopes with high thermal resistance and low air leakage and toward requiring practices in the design and selection of mechanical, electrical, and illumination systems that promote the efficient use of energy;

(8) provide, to the greatest extent possible, with the advice and consent of the building codes council and the Montana chapter of the international conference of building officials, a broadly uniform system of building code interpretations for the purposes of predictability, fairness, and efficiency.