www.sefindia.org

[slstructural]

Dear Madam, This is universal problem and not limted to our field or our country.
You need to see the problem in two ways a). Capablities of structural engineers, b). Legal farme work.
At this juncture, we are weak on both counts. Problem is further complicated by architects who do not have formal training on earthquake engineering b). Builder who is not bound by legal frame work, c). Commercialization of  education and d). Relatively poor academicians 




Where do we begin- It is a  chicken and egg syndrome.


I think, success of US mode emnates frm strong legal frame work supported by collective work of professionals. They have different standards when they operate in countries like ours...


 


On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 8:23 PM, sangeeta_wij <forum@sefindia.org (forum@sefindia.org)> wrote:

[u.mukesh]

Ok.

[rajesh modi]

I agree to madam Sangita..its tragedy that b.arch who can be any 12 th class commerce background is firing engineer. B arch was under art education till recent days.. Still they were bossing all engineers civil electrical mechanical in private projects...our this system is a big cruel joke On Jun 14, 2016 4:31 PM, sangeeta_wij <forum@sefindia.org> wrote:[quote]            Dear Anand  You are right that all contractors are looking for is the lowest steel consumption to achieve the cheapest design and build product but it is upto us as structural design engineers to bring to their notice if structural safety is being compromised, though it may amount to your losing the Project to some other structural engineer who may decide to overlook provisions of safety/drift/torsion /permissible deflections  etc and “make hay while the sun shinesâ€�. I am in the process of citing specific instances where personal greed has prevailed over good sense and structural engineers have turned a blind eye to the lack of adequate safety in designs.  The second instance that comes to my mind is a big public project where the architect(who had awarded the work to our firm), wanted me to design a high rise commercial with flat slabs; considering that present IS:1893 does not have provision of Flat slabs in the structural systems mentioned in table for “ Râ€�, I tried to discourage the use of Flat Slabs in Zone-IV. I also showed them an email discussion with an IITR Professor, clearly mentioning that the only reason why Flat Slabs have been omitted in this Table is because the Codal Committee wanted to discourage the use of Flat Slabs in high seismicity zones. However, my reluctance to design Flat Slabs was interpreted as a lack of expertise, and I had to face ridicule when I suggested that it will be suicidal to design the large Non-Tower Area slabs as Flat slabs, as the same will be subjected to Higher loads on account of Fire Tender movement and soil filling . The result was a shocking and total silence at the Architect’s end for a week, and the work was handed over to another consultant, without even bothering to officially withdraw it from my firm. The other consultant, a well known name in the industry has happily carried out the structural designs, exactly as desired by the architects, and the Project is now under construction. I am sure most of you are aware that the Draft of Revised 1893 which was circulated a few months ago, has now clearly spelt out that Flat slabs should not be used in Zones II, IV and V(annexure H) as the LFRS, but also restricted it’s use only after a detailed performance based analysis and design has been carried out as per ASCE41 to satisfy all the safety requirements. The Draft Code has also explained that our Code conforms to Collapse Prevention only  and has explained the other higher  categories of EQ safety like Life Safety, Immediate Occupancy and Operational. It has recommended a change in the way we have been designing, suggesting that Base Isolaters and Dampers maybe explored to enhance the structural safety to higher levels based on the Project requirements,type and use.  I lost not only a big Project, but also a lot of credibility in my organization, where I had few takers for my sincere attempts to guide the Clients towards a better structural system . I don’t know how many of you agree with me when I say that I lost my Project to someone with a lower sense of ethics about structural safety and designs.  (to be continued) Regards Sangeeta Wij  From: anand0 [mailto:forum@sefindia.org]  Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2016 12:40 PM To: general@sefindia.org (general@sefindia.org) Subject: [SEFI] Re: ethics in structural design and construction    Hello Sangeeta Wij & colleagues,  This practice is not only prevailing in private projects but also in EPC mode government projects. Contractor’s puppet structural consultant argue in same line for deviating codal provisions for sack of economy & proof checking of those designs become extremely difficult. Particularly situation is quite critical in affordable housing projects of government where they are going for 13-14 storey towers on design built basis where most of the contractors are only concerned about economy due to sheer competition. Implementation of new technology in government housing sector also need thorough review as many people are taking advantages  l in members sizes , thicknesses of external wall… …. in the name of new technologies.   Regards, Anand Shah    From: sangeeta_wij [mailto:forum@sefindia.org] ([mailto:forum@sefindia.org])  Sent: Monday, June 13, 2016 8:23 PM To: general@sefindia.org (general@sefindia.org) (general@sefindia.org (general@sefindia.org)) Subject: [SEFI] ethics in structural design and construction    My dear Sefians I don’t think we ever talk about it,but there’s a growing need to open this pandora’s box as I will be presenting a paper on Ethics in Structural Design, in a conference later this year. I have long felt the need to share some of the bitter/unpleasant experiences with some of the industry stake holders, who’ve been anything but ethical . I also request the reader’s to share their experience on the subject, without mentioning names of persons or of Projects.  The first instance that comes to my mind, is a structure where the Builder always boasted of a very low steel consumption and it became a habit to condone our designs because it was felt we were unable to match the other consultant’s magic figures of 4kg/sq ft for a 30+ storeyed structure. After a couple of such interactions, I challenged them and offered to review the ETABS/structural drawings free of cost ; to my horror, I found that the building, although existing in NCR, was not designed for a Zone IV earthquake, giving some stupid justification in DBR about Indian Codes being generally too conservative, and all the columns were built without ductile detailing.When this, and the other drawing/ detailing flaws were pointed out to their team, they simply shrugged it off with a smile and said that they knew this already as they has once hired a review consultant earlier too who had given a similar Report. In fact the building is a classic case of a Extreme soft storey and is a potential seismic hazard but is getting a beautiful façade and finishes. Now, I know for sure that they will be selling off the building premises without doing the necessary Retrofit and putting thousands of unsuspecting customers to risk. Do you think there is some place I can report this incognito? Well, I don’t think so but would like to hear from my industry friends .  Regards Sangeeta Wij         --

Posted via Email

[zubsaif]

That's painfully Horrible!!! No Laws!, 

Municipality heads got to wake up!!!


These building simply potential killers!!! Some day! Some day! 


Well, it is not bad to say that, these buildings are TIME BOMBS!


Where is Public Safety Department!!! its Approvals


Every city shall have a 1000 engineers to look after the safety designs, construction!!!


Chennai Floods is Big Debacle and Nobody wants to take any LESSONS from it!







Zubair Saifuddin Syed


Riyadh, SA

Mobile # +966549343496
Office  # +966560314624
Residence    # +966114557506

 








On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 5:53 PM, sangeeta_wij <forum@sefindia.org (forum@sefindia.org)> wrote:

[mdshameer]

Friends,


Ethics is not only in designing safe structures but also in designing economical structures. Over designs cannot be justified in the name of ethics as well. This part of the discussion should also be explored.


Regards
mdshameer






Sent from my Samsung device



-- Original message --
From: "u.mukesh" <forum@sefindia.org>
Date: 14/06/2016 4:14 pm (GMT+03:00)
To: general@sefindia.org
Subject: [SEFI] Re: ethics in structural design and construction

Dear Madam


We designed a semi under ground metro station (Netaji Subhash place) for DMRC (line-7).

The platform & concourse level are below ground level & the roof of station is about 4m above ground.

The total length of station is about 220m and there will be multistorey (6 storey) commercial building in the middle

125m above the station roof.

Here too DMRC does like beam-slab concept for station part. So the concourse, roof all are flat slab concept.

Although multistorey building was modeled as beam slab concept.
Present contractor will construct only the metro station, & the PD (they call it property development) building

will be made later on.

But here R was taken as "5'.

Span were in the range of 13.5m to 15m, & the DMRC's consultant "Systra" planned 800x800 mm columns.

Actually the columns sizes reached to 1600x1800, 1300x2500, 1500x2500 & so on for PD area building.

& this is all (220m length) monolithic; they don't allow any joints.

I think, this station should have been on beam slab concept. Flat slab behavior is not good in earthquake.

IITR has done any study on this, I think.

Madam If you have any material on this; pl send me at  u.mukesh@gmail.com (u.mukesh@gmail.com) (u.mukesh@gmail.com (u.mukesh@gmail.com))




Regards


Mukesh Upadhyay

SNC-Lavalin India Delhi





On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 4:38 PM, raghu forum@sefindia.org)> wrote:

[mohitnangia]

Kudos ma'am.. Great show

On Tuesday, 14 June 2016, anand0 <forum@sefindia.org (forum@sefindia.org)> wrote:

[rajesh modi]

Madam Sangita one more thing I want to mention is the negative status of construction industry in view of r.b.I and also central govt. Civil engineers can't get get any easy finance for contracting and so around ninety percent contractors are non civil engineer contractors...so there should be a strict law that engineer should have first preference as contractor and developer...then only structural engineer will get good respect...at the same time many b arch are doing builder business which is not allowed by law so it should be taken seriously by law enforcement people. On Jun 14, 2016 4:31 PM, sangeeta_wij <forum@sefindia.org> wrote:[quote]            Dear Anand  You are right that all contractors are looking for is the lowest steel consumption to achieve the cheapest design and build product but it is upto us as structural design engineers to bring to their notice if structural safety is being compromised, though it may amount to your losing the Project to some other structural engineer who may decide to overlook provisions of safety/drift/torsion /permissible deflections  etc and “make hay while the sun shinesâ€�. I am in the process of citing specific instances where personal greed has prevailed over good sense and structural engineers have turned a blind eye to the lack of adequate safety in designs.  The second instance that comes to my mind is a big public project where the architect(who had awarded the work to our firm), wanted me to design a high rise commercial with flat slabs; considering that present IS:1893 does not have provision of Flat slabs in the structural systems mentioned in table for “ Râ€�, I tried to discourage the use of Flat Slabs in Zone-IV. I also showed them an email discussion with an IITR Professor, clearly mentioning that the only reason why Flat Slabs have been omitted in this Table is because the Codal Committee wanted to discourage the use of Flat Slabs in high seismicity zones. However, my reluctance to design Flat Slabs was interpreted as a lack of expertise, and I had to face ridicule when I suggested that it will be suicidal to design the large Non-Tower Area slabs as Flat slabs, as the same will be subjected to Higher loads on account of Fire Tender movement and soil filling . The result was a shocking and total silence at the Architect’s end for a week, and the work was handed over to another consultant, without even bothering to officially withdraw it from my firm. The other consultant, a well known name in the industry has happily carried out the structural designs, exactly as desired by the architects, and the Project is now under construction. I am sure most of you are aware that the Draft of Revised 1893 which was circulated a few months ago, has now clearly spelt out that Flat slabs should not be used in Zones II, IV and V(annexure H) as the LFRS, but also restricted it’s use only after a detailed performance based analysis and design has been carried out as per ASCE41 to satisfy all the safety requirements. The Draft Code has also explained that our Code conforms to Collapse Prevention only  and has explained the other higher  categories of EQ safety like Life Safety, Immediate Occupancy and Operational. It has recommended a change in the way we have been designing, suggesting that Base Isolaters and Dampers maybe explored to enhance the structural safety to higher levels based on the Project requirements,type and use.  I lost not only a big Project, but also a lot of credibility in my organization, where I had few takers for my sincere attempts to guide the Clients towards a better structural system . I don’t know how many of you agree with me when I say that I lost my Project to someone with a lower sense of ethics about structural safety and designs.  (to be continued) Regards Sangeeta Wij  From: anand0 [mailto:forum@sefindia.org]  Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2016 12:40 PM To: general@sefindia.org (general@sefindia.org) Subject: [SEFI] Re: ethics in structural design and construction    Hello Sangeeta Wij & colleagues,  This practice is not only prevailing in private projects but also in EPC mode government projects. Contractor’s puppet structural consultant argue in same line for deviating codal provisions for sack of economy & proof checking of those designs become extremely difficult. Particularly situation is quite critical in affordable housing projects of government where they are going for 13-14 storey towers on design built basis where most of the contractors are only concerned about economy due to sheer competition. Implementation of new technology in government housing sector also need thorough review as many people are taking advantages  l in members sizes , thicknesses of external wall… …. in the name of new technologies.   Regards, Anand Shah    From: sangeeta_wij [mailto:forum@sefindia.org] ([mailto:forum@sefindia.org])  Sent: Monday, June 13, 2016 8:23 PM To: general@sefindia.org (general@sefindia.org) (general@sefindia.org (general@sefindia.org)) Subject: [SEFI] ethics in structural design and construction    My dear Sefians I don’t think we ever talk about it,but there’s a growing need to open this pandora’s box as I will be presenting a paper on Ethics in Structural Design, in a conference later this year. I have long felt the need to share some of the bitter/unpleasant experiences with some of the industry stake holders, who’ve been anything but ethical . I also request the reader’s to share their experience on the subject, without mentioning names of persons or of Projects.  The first instance that comes to my mind, is a structure where the Builder always boasted of a very low steel consumption and it became a habit to condone our designs because it was felt we were unable to match the other consultant’s magic figures of 4kg/sq ft for a 30+ storeyed structure. After a couple of such interactions, I challenged them and offered to review the ETABS/structural drawings free of cost ; to my horror, I found that the building, although existing in NCR, was not designed for a Zone IV earthquake, giving some stupid justification in DBR about Indian Codes being generally too conservative, and all the columns were built without ductile detailing.When this, and the other drawing/ detailing flaws were pointed out to their team, they simply shrugged it off with a smile and said that they knew this already as they has once hired a review consultant earlier too who had given a similar Report. In fact the building is a classic case of a Extreme soft storey and is a potential seismic hazard but is getting a beautiful façade and finishes. Now, I know for sure that they will be selling off the building premises without doing the necessary Retrofit and putting thousands of unsuspecting customers to risk. Do you think there is some place I can report this incognito? Well, I don’t think so but would like to hear from my industry friends .  Regards Sangeeta Wij         --

Posted via Email

[Bijoy Chandra Tripathy]

Thanks Ma'am for raising this issue.I was invited to inspect  the construction site of a multi storey Government office building.Raft foundation of L-shaped building(having 72m sides) was in progress.Difference in soil characteristics at both ends of L had been detected and reported.It is in EQ zone III and vulnerable to cycolne too.The point of narrating this is that there was no provision for expansion joint,not even in the superstructure.The  theory of simplifyng structures geometrically got lost somewhere.It is an EPC contract.The site-in-charge confirmed that the lack of EJ had been factored in the design by the Structural Engineer of the contractor and vetted by the Authority Engineer(Consultant).Government Design Wing had no say as per the Agreement.

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 6:41 PM, u.mukesh <forum@sefindia.org (forum@sefindia.org)> wrote:

[Hemalmodi]

I really appreciate that some of you are speaking up while it is only the "Act of GOD" that has prevented a major catastrophe.

It is about time we create "Structural Engineering Associations" that will help educate fellow engineers and also the community at large. This will take some time, but it will never happen unless we take the first step in that direction. And this won't happen overnight, as most of us understand that it took decades for US to step up and get a uniform "structural Engineering License" as mentioned in a recent article here:
http://www.structuremag.org/?p=10069

But at least they started implementation of code compliance at local city level and made it mandatory that the designs had to be stamped by licensed & approved engineer more than 50 years ago. So we also need to start with new construction, and slowly bring in laws to retrofit existing structures after a few years, but this has to be implemented on new construction at the earliest.

It is about time we give some credibility & accountability to engineers and that will happen when the government will require an SE approval based on some PEER review guidelines and until they can create a "plan check" department at the local municipality level that will review & approve the design before construction starts and issue the "occupancy certificate" after confirming the the struture was built as per the design and QA/QC was performed that include special inspection/structural observations performed licensed professionals. This also means that we need to create volunteer organizations like ASCE/SEI @ national level & SEAOC like groups at state level that will help with continuing education, enforce ethical behavior,  and provide sub committees for code changes and in case of India possibly provide peer review panels comprised of volunteers from our industry leaders at no cost to owners and confirm code compliance. The building codes are treated as useless recommendations (and engineers are ridiculed) unless codes are enforced and all the work done by BIS should be implemented and they should be granted the same status as International Code Council  in USA.

I can only compare with the system set in place in USA as a reference as I work here and every time I mentioned my inclination to move back to India, even the architect friends said they don't need "structural engineers" in India and they can get someone to put together some construction drawings for less than 10 Rs./sq. ft in most cases.

It scares me to death when I talk about the construction industry in India !!!

[sohel]

Dear Raghu,I am absolutely agree with you. Reinforcement cant be measure on per sq.ft.
In one of our esteemed govt. project, reinforcement was put in BOQ as  kg/sq.ft. During construction,  it was felt that reinforcement could be  exceeded by 40%. So, it created a lot of hue and cry. Govt. department started threatening our consulting firm that we should bring the reinforcement as close to BOQ quantity otherwise they will debar us.They are forcing us to revise the remaining GFC drawings.Drawings have already vetted by IIT .
                                             Govt. deptt.(Client) is only comparing with other similar projects where they have data for reinforcement in terms of kg/sq.ft. In comparing with other similar project with same built up area, it was found that other project was in EQ Zone-IV whereas our ongoing project is in EQ Zone-V. However, in both the projects, pile has proposed but in our ongoing projects soil is extremely loose. Most  of the buildings are irregular in nature  whereas in project of comparison , most of the buildings are regular in shape. Furthermore, stilt parking has proposed in our projects but in the comparison project , separate parking was proposed.
                                              Even after giving lots of justification for amplification of earthquake forces in irregular buildings,loose soil type,stilt floor because of soft storey,they did not convinced. They only know consumption of steel on kg/sq.ft.All stupid drama is still in progress. Will update you soon whether we  have debarred from govt. impaneled list or we able to convinced them.




regards!




sohel
  


On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 6:41 PM, u.mukesh <forum@sefindia.org (forum@sefindia.org)> wrote: