This course is presented by Alan Jeary and Thomas Winant. The changes in law since the collapse of the Champlain tower in Florida in 2022 has led to a wide-ranging change to local ordinances which have highlighted some differences in approaches to establishing structural integrity between different groups of professionals tasked with establishing and maintaining a safe environment that will avoid the recent calamities in the future. Current codes of practice in current use in the USA and in other countries already allow the use of a direct methodology to establish structural integrity of a structure. Nevertheless, there are vested interests that mitigate against allowing the most up-to-date techniques to be used so as to prevent the collapse of buildings under repair, ageing, under construction, or subjected to significant loading such as that caused by earthquakes in Turkic and New Zealand recently.

Learning Objectives

• The current legal requirements for assessing structural integrity.
• A review of the collapses of buildings in the US.
• A review of collapses worldwide.
• The legal framework for the design and routine surveying of structures.
• Changes to the legal framework in the US.
• Structural integrity definition.
• In-situ load testing – its place in current laws.
• The use of in situ load testing for forensic investigations.
  1. Turkic
  2. New Zealand
  3. USA