Some further background on South Australian system:

Development approval comprises in South Australia comprises of: 1) development plan consent 2) buildings rules consent Taken together, with maybe some additional conditions outside these two categories development approval is granted, and building permits issued. This system introduced with the 1993 development act and regulations, which basically distances the councils from any responsibility. The system has changed but human behaviour hasn't. As I understand prior to 1993, it seems to have been common to simply draw up some plans and take to council: and council would tell the building proponent what was required for approval. Not sure how it relates to the engineering, but for the simple they may have done that in-house or had some prescriptive solutions available not otherwise made public. Anycase councils are not allowed to do that any more. There is fairly strict enforcement of independence. Persons involved with ant aspect of the design are not permitted to be involved in the assessment and approval. The act also brought in private certifiers and certification for building rules consent. A lot of councils reduced their building departments, and outsource building rules assessment to the private certifiers. Once a private certifier has been appointed they cannot be removed from a project. The benefit of private certifiers (registered building surveyors) is consistency with respect to the building rules. The same design put into two different city councils may get approved by one and rejected by the other. If a market builder and put the same buildings all over the place then private certifier only has to look at the differences relative to the site. Whilst each city council would look at the entire proposal each and every time. Few manufacturers however have got the idea. Building surveyors are supposedly unrestricted in what they can assess, whilst building survey technicians are limited. Technicians require that calculations are certified by an independent technical expert, however most building surveyors tend to take this approach aswell. Local councils and private certifiers tend to have on going contracts with consulting engineers to act as indepenedent technical expert. Once again if go through different city councils can get inconsistencies in the engineering assessment. Which can be a good thing, but the focus is delays: got approved last week by council X, but rejected this week by council Y. Now city councils may ask for engineering calculations or a certificate of an independent technical expert. Now if someone turns up with a drawing of a say a garden shed. Can simply look at the drawings, conclude that done multitudes of such, and simply issue a certificate of an independent technical expert: as the evidence-of-suitability. However, if the proposal is non-compliant and need to specify what is required to make it compliant then loose status of independence, and have to submit the detailed calculations.

The problem is that people in general, including builders and others that should no better, still go to council expecting council to tell them what to do. The city councils are accused of being slow and causing unnecessary delays. So they played a game of stop the clock. Recent changes have reduced their ability to play this game. They would receive the development application make a quick review, and issue a request for further information: stopping their clock. The applicant is given 3 months to respond. Even though point 1 is typically no prescriptive solutions and point 2 provide engineers calculations. The applicants spend 3 months passing their application back and forth to council playing architect, resolving the 3 to 4 pages of issue they have. Seeking the engineering in the last week. Part of the pyschology on the part of councils, is that they cannot ask for architects drawings, but if they ask for engineering calculations there is a good chance of getting some decent drawings. Unfortunately the client only want calculations, because that is all the council asks for: and they are reluctant to pay for that: since they figure that council should just tell them what is required: or simply approve. After all they can see similar structures all over the place: so what is the problem? There are constants compliants about the city councils, being slow, causing unwarranted delays, and otherwise being unproductive and inefficient. The state planning authority keeps tweaking the system. But the system is not the problem: human behaviour is the problem. Insantity keep repeating same action and expecting different results. As I see it the building code of Australia, the australian buildings codes board CodeMark scheme, and the South Australian development act and regulations, all provide for an efficient system of operation. And all would be efficient if people through out the system got the idea how to use the system efficiently. But there are internal politics. There was resistance by council employees when new act came out, since councils started to cut back on size of building departments. Though many were already outsourcing engineering checks. The act also basically eliminated council inspections of building works, the rise in defects used to try and convince community to give control back to the council. However that did not happen, a minimum 20% inspection of applications was imposed as a responsibility. Some argued couldn't provide or needed to increase application fees, but was dismissed by reference to those councils which had retained their inspections. QA is some what misunderstood in building industry. They remove inspections but don't replace with anything to ensure compliance. Similarly there is a lack of check and balance on the certifications of independent technical experts. Inside a manufacturing organisation, not subjected to external regulation except by market forces, the operating procedures, and design methodolgies can be changed on a regular basis, with internal information and training programmes also taking place. All the people involved contributing to what the changes are to be. The building industry however is controlled by external forces. The building surveyors, and councils do not design they only make assessments and grant approval. They do not have to find design-solutions for all the potentially conflicting code clauses. Also the codes only take into consideration the performance of the end-product, they largely ignore the processes of: design, manufacture, handling, transportation and construction.

In effect every building is a real world experiment. No physical prototype has been built and had thousands of hours of testing, to validate the mathematical models employed. If make a mistake with mechanical calclations on small scale products, likely to find out when test. So design errors some waht minimised. But no accounting for rubbish getting made, installed and distributed, with need to recall. Fundamental to structural design is the guess of the loads, and assignment of the load to be designed for. No matter how complex the methods for obtaining it is still a guess, or a subjective judgement as to what it should be. At the end of the day the design load can be exceeded and the building can collapse. So not much point increasing complexity of the models, to try and hide the guess or hide subjective judgement. Its not really the relative difference between the magnitude of load and resistance that should be of concern. Rather the mode of failure should be of concern. People are not going to be happy if told have earthquake resistant buildings, and they experience an earthquake beyond the design loads. The human perception of safety, risk and personal responsibility need to be addressed. QA tries to avoid assignment of blame, rather looks for what in the system permitted a defect to occur. A defect may be a consequence of an individuals actions, but what caused them to take that action, or what caused them to be in such a job position? They say that 80% of all defects can be attributed to 20% of all causes. You can force changes to human habits, but under pressure originally formed habits tend to be dominant. For example I have no problems with my car indicators most of the time, have a bad day, and I am turning wind screen wipers on. Shifting location of controls is not good. Builders follow routine, throw something out of the ordinary in, and they are likely to mess it up. All kinds of issues then have to be resolved during construction. When the likes of Telford built small scale prototypes, not just testing end-prooduct but also testing the construction process. Whilst buildings are typically custom designed and built, there is still routine in the procedures that I don't beleive is getting the design effort required. This doesn't just result in defects getting into the building but also leads to accidents during construction. The construction processes need to be more quality robust. And the design and approval processes more quality robust. Whilst there may be new research that requires changes to the building codes, changing the codes contributes to the defects in the buildings, because the systems that use the codes are not quality robust enough to handle the variations introduced by the codes. Here some 80% of buildings are simply drawn up by building designers, or rather plan drafters. A large number of buildings are also owner built. The plan drafters build a reputation for getting development approval, and take on more and more complex buildings. And the community thinks that all that is required for approval is a picture of the proposal. They haven't yet quite got the requirement for evidence-of-suitability: and the onus is on them to prove suitable. Also most buildings exist already, so main issue is not new buildings, but modifications to existing buildings: especially modifications which take place without approval.

Attachment of carports and verandahs to houses a problem. There is a prescriptive construction guide for timber canopies, maximum span 4.2m. This guide indicates requirement to be compliant with AS1684 timber framing code. Builders concept, find out when house built, complies with AS1684, therefore can attach any size verandah desire to existing. Not what the clause meant. It is advising that the timber house structure needs checking against AS1684, taking account of the additional load imposed by the verandah. The house structure needs to be strengthened, and additional tie down provided. Multitude of problems concerning practicalities of such tie downs and its actual installation, and variations in councils assessment. Most of the additional rafter tie down useless since wind will just rip top plate of the wall studs. The populations however, basic view we don't have tropical cyclones: so requirements are excessive. Though roofs damaged every year by wind storms less than the design wind load. Quantitative Structural design is entirely dependent on qualitative judgments on the magnitude of input parameters. I believe currently more time needs to be spent on improving the qualitative aspects of the design, rather than the mathematical models. Things are getting out off balance, qualitative is being lost to number crunching. What is it that the people really want? Does all the building structure need to resist the same design level event? As far as I know most coldformed steel sheds have defective connections: 16mm end plate bolted to column flange less than 3mm thick. But been getting approval for some 30 years, and few recorded failures. The issue isn't really that they will fail, but rather when will they fail? If there is a wide spread strengthening campaign, at great expense, the issue will still be when will they fail? If the design level event is exceeded the day after strengthening there will be a lot of unhappy people. If codes are changed then implication that existing are flawed in some way. So the real issue is environmental monitoring and warning. During Tropical Cyclone Yasi, the general messages going out on twitter and the news were wind speeds that exceeded design wind speeds. Yet people were being told to take shelter in their houses, though some were evacuated. What is the community response when the design level event exceeded? And isn't it better to get familiar with responding, than become complacent that never going to be a problem again, and can cut back on emergency services? The insurance payout problem is too far great a component of the decision making. Further controlling mode of failure provides less hazardous system than increasing resistance to higher and higher loads. Better assessment of the magnitude and type of loads a structure experiences is important: but less important than how the structure behaves when the design load is exceeded. Also locked into the buildings we have by the inertia of peoples perceptions, and council planning requirements. That is hindered from building a hitech house. Also manufacturing and construction processes hinder moving forward. Not all that much real engineering in building and construction: the infrastructure for supply not really highly developed due to fragmentation amongst many small businesses. One car factory can produce 100,000 vehicles: that is private enclosures of space, every year. Can one building contractor do that? One billion people in world in need of shelter, and we are messing with mathematical models to say what was acceptable last week will still be acceptable next week. And given

that humans have legs, not roots, why do we construct dwellings anchored to the ground. A lot of the problems we have are because buildings are anchored in the wrong geographical location. Its crazy! One way around the building codes, and cost of land: Ships! Factory ships, hospitals, schools, offices and residences. Water 2/3rd of planet, land 1/3rd: plenty of solar. Cabin in ship, or box in skyscraper? Ships can dock together in middle of ocean and exchange goods. Doesn't the USA have a massive graveyard of unused ships? Minimise problems of geographical unemployment. More efficient factory typically gets built in new country, shutting old factory down: creating unemployment. But with ships, personnel just change ship. Aircraft are fast, but lost something relative to the merchant navy. The global village would be a lot smaller with ships spanning the oceans. Also changes the politics of international aid. Population not contricted to barren wasteland if skylifted to a floating city. But I'm diverging as usual. regards Conrad