The Institution's Sixtieth Anniversary Celebrations

Mr. Brian Scruby (Chairman): ‘ A point that occurred to me when reading your paper was that when I went to America a few years ago I saw some buildings which I thought were rather typical of the industrial side of American building and which seemed to be designed for a specific period of time. I wonder if you would say something about durability and its particular reference to the time factor? '

Mr. K. F. Simm (of Freeman Fox & Partners) writes: ' The computer program described by the author greatly simplifies the analysis of reinforced concrete columns subject to bi-axial bending. It has been used in my office for some time and the data preparation is very much easier than the laborious hand calculation involved in Saville's method. '

As progress towards the change to metric gathers speed and new metric versions of the various structural Codes of Practice are published, there is a great deal of discussion about the metric units adopted to express force, stress and loading.