In response to Public Law 101-614 and Executive Order 12941, the Interagency Committee on Seismic Safety in Construction (ICSSC) issued the first edition of Standards of Seismic Safety for Existing Federally Owned or Leased Buildings in 1994 as Recommended Practice 4 (RP 4) and the second edition, in 2002, as RP 6. This edition, designated Recommended Practice 8 (RP 8), is a revision of RP 6.

The intent of this Standards document is to identify common minimum evaluation and mitigation measures for all Federal departments and agencies and to ensure that all Federal entities have balanced agency-conceived and -controlled seismic safety programs for their existing owned or leased buildings. Since the issuance of RP 6, several Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) pre-standards have become national consensus standards issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers/Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE/SEI), some of which are being updated, and FEMA has continued to publish guidance documents related to the evaluation and retrofitting of existing buildings. These documents are referenced and cited throughout this 2011 edition of the Standards (RP 8).