Calvert County, MD Building Safety: Building Permits (2026)

Chapter 18 of the Code of Calvert County, Building Construction, was adopted by the Board of County Commissioners on May 17, 2022 by Ordinance No. 21-22, replacing an earlier version of the chapter dating to 1996 and amended in 2011. Section 18-1 adopts the International Building Code 2018 (IBC), published by the International Code Council, as the Building Code for Calvert County, along with the insertions, additions, deletions and changes to the IBC that the county wrote into an Exhibit A attached to the ordinance.

The same section adopts Chapters 1 through 11 and Appendixes E, F, Q and S of the International Residential Code 2018 (IRC) for buildings covered by that code, again subject to Exhibit A's local insertions, omissions and changes. Because the IBC and IRC set out the actual triggers, exceptions and procedures for when a building permit is required, in Calvert County outside Chesapeake Beach and North Beach those adopted 2018 editions, as locally amended, are the operative permitting rules administered by the county's Inspections and Permits function; Chapter 18 itself does not restate those permit triggers, it adopts them by reference.

Section 18-2 fixes the transition: the chapter took effect July 1, 2022 upon filing with the Clerk of the Circuit Court, and any building permit application filed before that adoption is instead handled under the version of Chapter 18 that was in effect before the 2022 ordinance, while any application filed after the effective date is governed by the 2022 chapter and its adopted 2018 codes.