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The Structural Engineer, Volume 61, Issue 7, 1983
Health and safety and the structural engineer From time to time, members of the Institution have found it necessary to draw attention to shortcomings, as they saw them, in developments in the form of structures and their design, which might endanger public safety then or in the future. In 1964, several members, who dealt with building controls in a major urban and industrial area of England, drew attention to the problems they could foresee arising in the increasing use of precast concrete systems in the construction of multistorey buildings. Their concern had been triggered by a report on the collapse of a precast building in Aldershot in 1963 and by their experience in checking design submissions. The response by the Institution was to hold a major symposium ‘Industrialised building and the structural engineer’, in 1966, which presented a comprehensive review of design and construction in a number of materials, with some reference to research and development; it dealt particularly with the function of the structural engineer. The response to this initiative was not, however, sufficient to stimulate the reappraisal of developments then taking place which might possibly have avoided some of the structural failures of the following decade. Verulam
On 24 March last, the Institution’s Informal Study Group ‘Model Analysis as a Design Tool’ organised a half-day colloquium on the subject ‘Offshore structural design using model analysis’. The following report on the proceedings has been prepared by Mr John Clarke of the Cement & Concrete Association. Details of the Institution’s Study Groups, with names and addresses of Conveners, were published in The Structural Engineer, June 1983, p197 The aim of the half-day colloquium was to illustrate the ways in which the use of models plays a significant role in the design of a major structure. The oil production platforms in the North Sea have required design expertise from many different disciplines. The colloquium covered the use of models in the design, fabrication and installation of a major steel jacket platform for the BP Magnus field, described by members of the John Brown - Earl & Wright design team. Mr John Clarke
Mr A. C. G. Hayward (F) (Cass Hayward & Partners): The author is to be congratulated on his elegant bridge, which displays the attributes of steel in giving a slender structure, easy to construct. He states that a concrete design would not have been cheaper, and this reflects a current trend even for quite modest spans, in this case 34 m. As evidenced by recent winning contractor’s alternative designs, steel is again finding favour. This is often where official designs had been done in concrete quite correctly at a time when the relative economies had dictated against steel. This problem, of course, is often inevitable in larger projects where tenders are invited some years after the appraisal is first done and choice of design made. It can be alleviated if contract documents allow freedom for submission of viable alternative designs by contractors to defined rules of selection. An independent, design check is a vital part of such procedures.