Written on Monday, 28th September 2009 by Neeta

Structural Engineering is a sub domain of Civil Engineering which deals with Structures, their design, Construction and Stability. All Civil Engineering designs are with “Factor of Safety of 3.0. Structural designs are planned and put on the drawing boards with the highest possible Factor of Safety, compared to other disciplines of Engineering. But then we see under construction structures falling. This thought has continued to haunt me over last few years. Recent few incidents in India,  have raised questions more than they have given answers. Delhi Metro is a prestigious project which entails connecting all major locations in NCR. Two months back, one of its under construction pier failed.

Committees were formed and there were deliberations amongst the experts over what really happened. Whenever any such mishap happens, chances of finding out the truth gets bleak as the authorities involved adopt safe route. Recent incident of Chimney collapse at BALCO is another pointer to design practices and quality norms adopted by big infrastructural companies.

Reason why we have interacted with Civil Engineering professionals and summed up their expertise is to find out the reasons why structures fail.

structures fail predominantly on account of following listed reasons.

  1. Faulty design: Design of big structures is a very complex subject and involves many complex equations and practices. Expertise of our professionals have been put up in Standards IS/BS which are employed in good measure to design buildings and structures. As explained In Civil Engineering parlance highest Factor of Safety is used, so that chances of failures are minimal.
  2. Poor Quality: This is the most common reasons for structures failures. To circumvent this problem, construction companies should resort to third party inspections and third party routine checks. Finding of third party should be reported to top management only. Sampling and testing should be done in reputed labs and re-sampling from the sampled lots should be got checked in different labs.
  3. Poor supervision: This is one area which most of us neglect. Careful monitoring at supervisor ends can nip any such unforeseen thing in bud.
  4. Proper construction sequence: Construction should take place in sequential manner so that loads on all members should be balanced and do not exceed their inherent capacities.

Careful planning, quality awareness, validated design and proper supervision can take care of all construction related problems and bring down failure rate to zero.


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