Commissioners rejected national standards their own technical experts recommended — again. Twenty-two proposals. Two technical advisory committees. …The Florida Building Commission rejected it all. I have written before about the Florida Building Commission’s troubling habit of discarding the recommendations of its own technical experts. That wasn’t a one-off. The same pattern is now blocking Florida from adopting nationally accepted standards for mass timber construction. …This is not a bet on unproven technology. The tall mass timber provisions are already the law in 44 states, either statewide or through local adopting jurisdictions — 38 of them statewide. And the projects are already here. A six-story mass timber office building just topped out in Fort Lauderdale. Approved plans for Pensacola’s Maritime Park include 11- and 16-story mass timber towers — poised to be the tallest in the state. Every one of those projects must squeeze through Florida’s “alternative means and methods“ process. …Inconsistency. Uncertainty. Unnecessary cost.