Viewpoint: Communication in the event of failure

Letters this month include discussion on designing columns for fire resistance, the pioneer of portal frames, raising the CM exam pass mark and SER Ltd.

Alasdair Beal imparts some extra information relating to the paper by Lazlo Kollar, Bernat Csuka and Tamas Ther, published in the July 2014 issue of The Structural Engineer .

Authors from Heriot-Watt and The University of Stuttgart use a large amount of test data to evaluate EC2 rules for the design of tension lapped joints - and suggest that a degree of revision may be necessary, as the rules don't appear to offer the margins of safety expected.