SOP 7: Best Management Practices

Three options are presented herein for complying with the Standard Operating Procedures for treating historic resources. The first entails conformance with Best Management Practices (BMPs) for actions that are not anticipated to remove or alter historic materials or character-defining features. (Refer to the Preservation Guidelines chapter that follows for further discussion of appropriate BMPs for historic buildings and structures, landscapes, and archaeological resources.) The other two involve consultation with the Campus Preservation Officer (CPO), or consultation with Georgia State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), contingent upon the proposed action and the category of the resource.

BMPs are used to guide instances of routine maintenance and corrective maintenance activities, where the action does not remove or alter historic materials or character-defining features. BMPs assume for the most part that actions involve “in kind” changes, with alterations to historic materials and spaces that are reversible. Where actions are not reversible, the CPO will be consulted. While BMP activities generally do not require consultation with the CPO or the SHPO, the CPO will be available for technical assistance and consultation.

Because most of the actions involving historic resources are anticipated to fall under the treatment approach of rehabilitation as defined by the Secretary of the Interior, and the rehabilitation standards are consistent with the goals of the University noted above, these form the basis for the BMPs outlined in this Standard Operating Procedure. The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation are as follows:

  1. A property will be used as it was historically, or be given a new use that requires minimal change to its distinctive materials, features, spaces and spatial relationships.
  2. The historic character of a property will be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or alteration of features, spaces and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided.
  3. Each property will be recognized as a physical record of its time, place and use. Changes that create a false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features or elements from other historic properties, will not be undertaken.
  4. Changes to a property that have acquired historic significance in their own right will be retained and preserved.
  5. Distinctive materials, features, finishes and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize a property will be preserved.
  6. Deteriorated historic features will be repaired rather than replaced. Where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a distinctive feature, the new feature will match the old in design, color, texture and, where possible, materials. Replacement of missing features will be substantiated by documentary and physical evidence.
  7. Chemical or physical treatments, if appropriate, will be undertaken using the gentlest means possible. Treatments that cause damage to historic materials will not be used.
  8. Archeological resources will be protected and preserved in place. If such resources must be disturbed, mitigation measures will be undertaken.
  9. New additions, exterior alterations, or related new construction will not destroy historic materials, features, and special relationships that characterize the property. The new work will be differentiated from the old and will be compatible with the historic materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing to protect the integrity of the property and its environment.
  10. New additions and adjacent or related new construction will be undertaken in such a manner that, if removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the historic property and its environment would be unimpaired.

Return to: HPMP Standard Operating Procedures