Construction Health & Safety News, Advice and Information from PP Construction Safety

SCOSS publishes reports and expert comment on a range of issues

The Structural-Safety web site combining CROSS (Confidential reporting on structural safety) and SCOSS (Standing committee on structural safety) issues regular newsletters and includes a data base of reports, alerts and other publications.

Newsletter No 32 has now been published and contains reports and expert comment on the following matters.

Visit the website to view the full reports:

• Partial roof collapse at shopping centre

There was a recent partial roof collapse at a Shopping Centre which was, says the reporter, built in the early 1970s in a form which may have been used extensively throughout the UK during this period and possibly beyond.

• Design deficiencies in long span steelwork portal

A firm was commissioned to design steel joints on a large, single-storey supermarket structure for a fabricator. Construction was underway and steelwork was due on site in a matter of weeks. Whilst carrying out a review of the design drawings the reporter’s consulting firm identified two areas of serious concern and brought them to the notice of the frame designer.

• Substitution of undersize steel sections

Having read your recent warning on the failure of certified steel products (Newsletter No 29), despite having certification, a reporter feels it necessary to report a similar but more basic problem.

• Inadequate steel beam splice

As part of a project a reporter provided the design for a steel beam. The client sourced this from a fabricator and it came with a mid-span splice.

• Steelwork connection design

Thank you very much for your latest Newsletter, says a reporter, who was particularly interested in an article on the design of steelwork connections. He has worked as project engineer on many projects and has also worked for steelwork fabricators designing connections for them on hundreds of projects.

• Polyethylene pipework handrails

A reporter has seen handrails for edge protection being provided using Polyethylene Pipework. One instance was on a site where the handrail has been used on an access platform fixed to formwork. Other defects were also apparent on this platform, such as the lack of toe boards, excessive gap between rails etc.

• Certification of seismic design software

A reporter is concerned about third party certification of seismic design software, and believes that users should carefully consider the assumptions that have been made in any such program.

• Proprietary software for cantilevers

Whilst checking output of a cantilever beam from a proprietary software package a reporter noted that the section incorrectly passed the lateral torsional buckling check because it failed to check the absolute value of the hogging moment against the allowable buckling moment.

This article was posted on 22nd October 2013