| Code
Complexities
As chair of the Masonry Standards Joint Committee and a long-time ENR subscriber,
I read with interest your article on building codes, "Structural Engineers
Labor to Unravel Mysteries of Building Codes" (ENR 7/18 p. 26). On behalf of MSJC, which updates its Code and Specification at 3-year
intervals and whose latest edition was published in 2005, I appreciate your
assessment that we present relatively few difficulties for practicing designers.
We continue to work hard on user-friendliness
in a context of technical excellence, on the simplified design
procedures that you advocate and on dialog to establish a
code-development cycle whose length addresses development
as well as assimilation of new knowledge.
I would like to add one clarification
to your article. MSJC is not sponsored by the Masonry Institute
of America, a well-regarded masonry promotion organization
in Los Angeles whose members contribute technically to MSJC.
MSJC is sponsored jointly by The Masonry Society, the American
Concrete Institute, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.
ENR readers interested in learning more about MSJC are invited
to explore our Website (www.masonrystandards.org), and attend
our next meeting, Oct. 16-18, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
After reading your
article "Structural Engineers Labor to Unravel Mysteries
of Building Codes," I am reminded of the dedication in
the front of Professor T. Y. Lin’s book, Prestressed
Concrete Structures. It reads, "To engineers who,
rather than blindly following the codes of practice, seek
to apply the laws of nature."
T. Y., one of the great structural engineers of the
20th Century, was my friend, as well as former employer, and
he always stressed that no matter how complicated a structure
was, we should "keep it simple," meainging our approach
and analysis. It appears that those that write the codes have
lost that basic concept.
Toward Reason
Your articles on
the NIST investigation are serving to succinctly underline
the facts in this issue (ENR 7/4 p. 10). If we’re fortunate,
the public will begin to listen to logic.
Unfortunately, the "if it
bleeds, it leads" success formula in mass media means
that overheated rhetoric on life safety, and societal hand-wringing
over "what we might have done" will nearly always
overcome the more staid and boring facts. It is too pat to
blame the media. If people didn’t enjoy being scared
to death, the prophets of doom would go out of business and
ENR would be more widely read than Time magazine.
Thanks for the voice of reason.
|
