Spotlight on Structures (September 2015)

John Parker finds this collection of papers to be something of a mixed bag, with some very useful and well set out, but others less so. Overall, though, he concludes that it would make a good addition to the library of any engineer designing high-rise buildings.

David Edwards argues that the serviceability limit state for runway beams should be considered to be slope, not deflection, meaning that current limitations are overly conservative in most cases.

We have Fairtrade foods, why not ‘fair-trade’ construction materials, or even fair-trade construction contracts? asks Pete Gates in an article discussing the wider impact of our actions as engineers, and considering the advantages of quantifying and measuring our impact.