Viewpoint: Which way now for codes and standards: Prescription, performancebased or what?

• Stuart Matthews ^[1]
  1. [1] BEng
• Localización: The Structural Engineer: journal of the Institution of Structural Engineer, ISSN 1466-5123, Vol. 97, Nº. 5, 2019, págs. 30-32
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Building regulations and construction standards have been in the spotlight recently, particularly as a result of a number of fi re incidents around the globe, notably in the UAE and the Grenfell Tower fi re tragedy in the UK. These events are having an important infl uence on the development of building regulations and construction standards.

    Building control requirements date back to antiquity. King Hammurabi of Babylon1 is famously credited with the fi rst recorded building regulation – this is his Law 229 dating from around 1750BC. Among other matters, this defi nes various liabilities for the builder of a house which collapses, with the liabilities depending on the consequences of the collapse.

    Law 229 is eff ectively a performance statement. It addressed structural safety and performance in terms of the user experience, with no mention of the material or form of construction of the building.

    However, it is also relevant to note that many of the other Laws of King Hammurabi – of which there are nearly 300 – were of a prescriptive nature.

    Today’s British Standards Institution (BSI) grew out of the standards development activities of the UK professional engineering community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The introduction of prescriptive standards produced clear economic benefi ts for the large-scale production of manufactured goods and construction materials.

    However, to what degree is this approach still relevant to current and future engineering practice and manufacture? Now, concepts such as ‘mass customisation’, backed by agile bespoke design and manufacturing technologies, are being proposed by some as examples of a potentially plausible future production philosophy. How applicable will these concepts be to structural engineering in the future? What might the implications be if such approaches became the new paradigm for construction?