DoD construction runs on the Unified Facilities Criteria. UFC 4-010-01 is the DoD antiterrorism standard for buildings; its 2018 edition applied to all DoD components and all inhabited DoD buildings, with implementation mandatory for all new construction regardless of funding source. The standard was reissued in July 2026 as digital criteria, so teams confirm current applicability on WBDG per project. [1][2]

Nonmilitary federal facilities answer to the Interagency Security Committee instead. The ISC's Risk Management Process standard defines how security professionals determine a facility's security level and provides a single source of physical security countermeasures for all nonmilitary federal facilities. [4]

The standard turns on occupancy. Under the 2018 edition, an inhabited building is one routinely occupied by eleven or more DoD personnel at a density greater than one person per 430 gross square feet. Industrial and storage buildings are generally excluded, but a densely occupied administrative area inside one is treated as inhabited. [1][2]

The first requirement in that edition is distance. New construction and additions must hold at least 20 feet of standoff to the installation perimeter where 30 feet or more of clear zone lies outside it, and the aggregate standoff, counting the clear zones inside and outside the perimeter, must reach 50 feet. Where there is no clear zone outside the perimeter, the minimum standoff is 50 feet on its own. [2]

Flying glass dominates injuries in building explosions; DHS's blast mitigation manual notes that in the Oklahoma City bombing about forty percent of survivors in the federal building cited glass, and window blinds, as contributing to their injuries. That is why windows carry some of the most prescriptive requirements. [5]

The 2018 edition requires laminated glass or polycarbonate at no less than a quarter inch nominal in exterior glazing, and monolithic glass does not qualify. Its glazing provisions also reach existing buildings: any time a window or skylight in an inhabited building is replaced, the glazing requirements apply. [1][2]

Structural hardening was long governed separately by UFC 4-023-03, Design of Buildings to Resist Progressive Collapse, which made compliance mandatory for buildings of three or more stories. WBDG now marks that document archived and superseded by UFC 3-301-01, Structural Engineering, so the governing structural criteria are confirmed per project rather than assumed. [3]

For a specialty contractor, progressive collapse work is invisible in a project headline either way. It reads as extra ties, transfer capacity, and connection detailing in the structural package, and it is decided during design rather than bought as a named trade. [3]

Standoff is the primary lever in blast design: the larger the distance between a building and the closest point an explosive device can reach, the lower the blast loading the structure must resist. Site plans, perimeter work, and barrier lines in public project documents are therefore hardening signals in themselves. [5]

Renovation thresholds matter too. The 2018 edition applied its provisions to qualifying major renovations, and its glazing rules triggered on window replacement alone, so a modernization award on an occupied DoD building is worth checking for hardening scope even when the notice never says the word blast. Whether a given award crosses either threshold is a per-project question, and the July 2026 reissue reorganized the applicability criteria, so the current text gets read before a pursuit is priced. [1][2]