The Ridgeway Footbridge

Professor David Nethercot, FEng, Chairman of the Institution’s Research Panel, writes: ‘The principal objective of the Institution's Research Panel is to raise the profile of the importance and value of research among the membership. It does this in a variety of ways and starting with this issue of The Structural Engineer it will be publicising these more widely through a regular research matters page. The exact content will vary but, over the year; should include a mix of announcements and reports on R & D events, articles describing the work of selected research organisations, news of research initiatives - in short an easily scanned page of items designed to benefit the membership by keeping it abreast of the more important and relevant current research activity in structural engineering. Although it is the responsibility of the Research Panel to produce the copy, readers with potentially interesting contributions should contact Dr Susan Doran at the Institution about the possibility of making a contribution.’

It is becoming evident that a significant proportion of both public and private construction projects are adopting the design-and-build (D & B) construction procurement route. Whilst several advantages have been attributed to the D & B method, a number of disadvantages have also been ascribed to it. Concurrent engineering, an innovative product development paradigm that has emerged within the manufacturing industry, although popular within that sector, is still little known in the construction industry. However, the D & B method of construction procurement presents some similarities with the activities in manufacturing processes. This paper examines the traditional approach to product development as well as the concurrent engineering approach, showing its principles and goals, and its benefits over the traditional approach. It also discusses design function deployment, (DFD), a concurrent engineering design system, which provides a platform for the implementation of concurrent engineering. The paper concludes with the presentation of a new concurrent engineering model for D & B projects. N.F.O. Evbuomwan and C.J. Anumba

This excursus is in the form of a presentation made by Norman Jacobs, OBE, Chairman of the Football Licensing Authority, at the second seminar on 4 December 1995, which further discussed the report Temporary demountable structures, published by the Institution in October 1995. In my time, I have been, with varying degrees of success, a railway station porter, a street market trader, a soldier and a lawyer, but I have never been any sort of an engineer. Indeed, I rather suspect that I came by my invitation to participate here today not because of my past careers but more because of my present job as Chairman of the Football Licensing Authority, a body stemming from Lord Justice Taylor’s Report following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. That report, with its 76 recommendations, is transforming the stadia where football is played and thereby the very face of our national game. Put in the context of what we are about today, I would suggest that those recommendations comprise a compendium of safety guidance which, within its immediate context and probably far beyond, will stand out as a reference point and safety landmark for years to come. Unfortunately, the trigger for that guidance was a disaster which claimed 96 lives, whilst the guidance document at the root of today’s seminar was prompted by the collapse, in 1992, of a demountable structure in Bastia, Corsica, causing 17 deaths and over 2000 injuries, followed in 1994 by the failure of another such structure at a pop concert at Earls Court involving 1100 spectators. All these cases highlighted the need for guidance. N. Jacobs