News

New On-Demand Advanced Training on the Standards for Rehabilitation and New Guidance on Economic and Technical Feasibility

April 30, 2026

On-Demand Advanced Training on the Interpretation and Application of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation

Recorded training on the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation is now available as a series of on-demand webinars. This training series discusses the interpretation and application of the Standards, focusing in particular on the inherent flexibility within the Standards generally, as well as when applying them to rehabilitation projects involving common property types and project considerations. Although project examples are drawn from the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program, the material is broadly applicable in other contexts and to the other sets of the Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. This training is intended for consultants, architects, developers, and other program-users already well familiar with the Standards and was previously piloted as an in-person training in June 2025. 

New Guidance on Economic and Technical Feasibility in Applying the Standards for Rehabilitation

New guidance has been issued on economic and technical feasibility considerations in the interpretation and application of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. This guidance discusses how economic, technical, and related programmatic and practical concerns and specific potential factors can be appropriately taken into consideration in their application, including such issues as costs, code and technical requirements, long-term maintainability, programmatic issues, the relative degree of difficulty of the project, and reversibility. The guidance is a companion to Webinar #1 of the above webinar series and is, like that training, broadly applicable to the other sets of the Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. 

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New Guidance and Webinar on Historic Wood Flooring and the Use of Substitute Flooring

July 31, 2025

Wood flooring is often important in defining the overall historic character of a historic building. It can be considered both an important element of a character-defining space as well as a distinctive historic material itself that should be preserved.

The National Park Service has issued new guidance that provides information about evaluating historic wood flooring for possible replacement and when it may be acceptable to use a different material than the historic one for replacement consistent with the Standards for Rehabilitation. Substitute materials addressed include engineered wood and Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT)/Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP). The principles discussed in this guidance can also generally be applied to the replacement of other types of flooring materials beyond just wood.

The National Park Service has also issued a new training webinar as a companion to this guidance and provides additional and detailed information related to this topic, including many different examples for replacing historic wood flooring as well as other historic flooring materials.

The guidance and training address economic and technical feasibility considerations in applying the Standards for Rehabilitation to this topic and that flexibility may sometimes be needed when it comes to new and replacement materials as part of a historic rehabilitation project.