Where Now With the Teaching of Structures?

In his Presidential Address Keith White reiterated the concerns expressed earlier in the year of the effects of fee competition on the profession. He goes on to say that many smaller practices may be ineed of help on this issue, among others. C. Mitchell

Mr Wex: I thought there was a degree of contradiction between David Quinion and Geoffrey Hutton. I inferred David Quinion was implying that, with quality assurance applied to innovation, there really was very little that the innovator could not prove before the structure was constructed. I think that Geoffrey Hutton is saying-and I rather agree with him-that if we do a reasonable amount of laboratory testing (or, perhaps, however much we do), it is not until the structure has been up for 10, 20, 30, or 40 years that we really find out what is happening to that innovation because of the difficulty of reproducing in laboratory short-term experiments long term environmental conditions. I am misunderstanding you both?

Mr M. Gaynor (F): Mr Jackson’s paper is an excellent contribution to an understanding of BS5400, and this clarification comes none too soon, but it is a pity that he did not address the topic of the validity of the limit states and their relative importance. The way the limit states are used requires presupposing a number of facts whose validity I find difficulty in accepting and also ignores matters which crop up from time to time, such as durability and acceptable degree of damage in the ‘ultimate’ condition, which are of fundamental importance to the practice of structural engineering.