Codes of practice reflect the combined wisdom of a profession. They provide the minimum requirements that a design has to satisfy. They have a legal status, in the sense that any failure consequent to the violation of the provisions of a code can land a designer into a legal liability. However, the codes of practice do not prescribe a process of design nor they constrain the designer from adopting the latest knowledge and developments in the profession to do the
design. More recently, the provisions of the codes of practice have been incorporated in the computer aided design software to ensure the design meets the requirements of the governing
code. Hence, the method of representing the code in such
software can greatly affect the transparency and longevity
of the software. With continuing research and development
activities at an accelerated pace, there is great explosion in the generation and dissemination of knowledge in all areas
of engineering.

 

This has led to the need to revise the governing codes of practice at regular intervals, in order to reflect the more recently generated professional knowledge appropriately in the corresponding codes. In India, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the
statutory body that publishes the codes of practice to be followed in the Indian Professional practice. Though the
codes of practices of other countries such as USA are revised at regular intervals, the codes issued by BIS are revised only after 20 to 25 years. The second revision of IS 800 was published in 1984. The third revision of the code was released after about 24 years, in Feb 2007, by the BIS1. The material contained in the code reflects the state-of-the-art of knowledge, and is based on the provisions in other international codes as well as other research publications.
The clauses contained in the code were developed by a team headed by Prof. R. Narayanan and later by Prof. Kalyanaraman of IIT Madras.

 

This version of the code based on the limits state method of design philosophy whereas the earlier version was based on working stress method. This article reviews some of the important
provisions of the new code.