By BEN LUNDIN

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – The planning organization hired by St. John Parish to institute Louisiana’s new building codes will host a series of question and answer sessions on Thursday designed to inform tradesmen and residents about the specific areas of the new codes.

South Central Planning will hold the meeting at the Louisiana Technical College’s River Parish campus at 181 Regala Park Rd. in Reserve, from 3 p.m. until 8 p.m., with six subsequent 45-minute discussions and one 30-minute discussion to cap it off.

From start to finish, the sessions’ topics are home designers, building, foundation, plumbing, electrical, mechanical and insulation.

The meeting is free for everyone.

South Central Planning operates its regional code construction compliance program in St. John, St. James, Assumption, Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Those five parishes constitute the entirety of the planning commission, which parish representatives agreed to join in early 2007 to ease the economic burden of enforcing State Act Number 12, a uniform building code for all new construction in 2007.