Building Construction for geeks

[berserkfan]

OK, I am posting this in Geeky rather than Off Topic hoping to stimulate one of the technical discussions for which Geekhack is famous. Please no silly comments, Geekspeak please! Engineers, start your mental engines!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35515749

On Chinese New Year a minor quake hit Taiwan. Not enough to hurt most people - but it caused a massive collapse of one building.

Which turned out, as the BBC says in its British stiff upper lip humour, to be reinforced by cooking oil drums and styrofoam.

It is so not funny.

In this part of the world, many buildings are seriously very, very poorly built. Some Chinese bridges have collapsed the day before opening, stuff like that. Sometimes Chinese buildings fall like dominoes before construction is finished - and it turns out the innards have zero steel rods. The contractor was just hoping to build something that looks like a building, so he gets paid, after which he flees.

I dare not imagine what will happen if there is a REAL quake.

Now you engineers, can you tell us how you test and check for unsound construction? I imagine that the USA being a vast country, surely there are engineering projects that are unsupervised. How do you know that a building is well built if you can't see what has gone into the concrete, if you can't tell if the pipes have lead, if you can't see that the copper wiring is very poor, if some inferior steel has gone into the screws, etc?

[kurplop]

I sometimes will rant about the degree of overregulation in the US, in the construction industry and in business in general. Unfortunately, even with that, there are occasional bad practices that slip by the engineers, builders and public and private inspectors—sometimes intentionally. When conditions come that challenge the integrity of a building, many of these oversights are brought to light. I don't think that more regulations and oversight is the answer; these things just increase costs for everybody and we are already at a point of diminishing returns.

I think that the biggest problem is a lack of integrity in the individual; whether that be the builder or the inspector. Payoffs, kickbacks, excessive profit at the expense of good workmanship, incompetence, laziness, and accelerated completion schedules are more often the blame than existing regulations, which are sometimes overlooked anyways with bribes or being a member of the good old boy network.

I can't speak for best building practices outside the US but suspect human indiscretions are at least a part of the problem.

"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
John Steinbeck

[Leslieann]

They are not sure those oil cans and such contributed to the collapse, they were found in fascia, not structural members. They won't know until they can get deeper into the wreckage.

As mentioned, most modern places do regular inspections as construction proceeds. I say most, because there are still places in the US where there are no building codes. There still however home inspections for insurance and such as well as criminal penalties if something happens.

Many of these countries do not have penalties, or the resources to chase down offenders even if there are penalties. Worse, especially China and such, companies crop up, do one job and disappear again, without good record keeping, the only thing you may have is a defunct company name and no one to prosecute. Another tactic is use common names, so you cannot identify who it was that actually were the owners. This is a major problem with doing business over there, as a company may be registered under 50 names, when one gets a bad reputation they just keep operating under the 49 others, and start building another name. You can find this same tactic on Ebay.

[berserkfan]

They are not sure those oil cans and such contributed to the collapse, they were found in fascia, not structural members. They won't know until they can get deeper into the wreckage.

As mentioned, most modern places do regular inspections as construction proceeds. I say most, because there are still places in the US where there are no building codes. There still however home inspections for insurance and such as well as criminal penalties if something happens.

Many of these countries do not have penalties, or the resources to chase down offenders even if there are penalties. Worse, especially China and such, companies crop up, do one job and disappear again, without good record keeping, the only thing you may have is a defunct company name and no one to prosecute. Another tactic is use common names, so you cannot identify who it was that actually were the owners. This is a major problem with doing business over there, as a company may be registered under 50 names, when one gets a bad reputation they just keep operating under the 49 others, and start building another name. You can find this same tactic on Ebay.

Even if these were just connecting walls, it is damned unacceptable to stuff styrofoam and other garbage as filler.

As for China, one thing I don't understand, is that they actually have a very effective national ID system that can tell one Zhang Li from another. You can't open a bank account or move to another city without proper id. The private companies like Alibaba do a very good job to make sure scammers don't pop up.

Westerners think that the Chinese authorities can't tell one Chinese from another but that's not true. It's lack of political will, not lack of bureaucratic power. When it comes to political commentary, rest assured that there are very few cases of the wrong Zhang Li being arrested for bad mouthing the Party.

[berserkfan]

I can't speak for best building practices outside the US but suspect human indiscretions are at least a part of the problem.

"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
John Steinbeck

Aren't you the construction worker? Please tell us that there are actually ways of checking. Like sounding the concrete pillar, scratching the pipe with a screwdriver, measuring voltage drop across cables, that kind of thing?

This whole reliance on inspecting is really dependent on the individual inspector, right? I can imagine a good ol Mississippi boy signing off on substandard housing for black people with a wink of his eye.

[jd29]

I can imagine a good ol Mississippi boy signing off on substandard housing for black people with a wink of his eye.

You mean you can imagine a good ol Mississippi boy signing off on dangerous housing in hopes a black occupant will meet harm inside?

All my life I've worked in renovation, and I've never known someone to do sloppy work on a building just because the owner is black. I've never closely observed an inspector, but I've worked with a lot of good ol boys and a lot of black people, and somehow everyone manages to get along. Setting aside the idea of white vs black in the south, you won't find much success down here with an attitude like that, such a large portion of the population being black.

Inspectors are bureaucrats though, and often they don't have much oversight. It might well happen, but that has more to do with the inspector being a racist ****head than a good ol boy. Are these racist ****heads very common? Not in my experience, no.

[berserkfan]

I've never closely observed an inspector, but I've worked with a lot of good ol boys and a lot of black people, and somehow everyone manages to get along. Setting aside the idea of white vs black in the south, you won't find much success down here with an attitude like that, such a large portion of the population being black.

Inspectors are bureaucrats though, and often they don't have much oversight. It might well happen, but that has more to do with the inspector being a racist ****head than a good ol boy. Are these racist ****heads very common? Not in my experience, no.

jd29, I welcome your comments. Travelling in the South I also thought the dynamics are kind of hard to understand.

Whites and blacks act respectfully to each other, yet ultimately they don't talk and don't mix. They don't want each other in their lives, yet overt hatred or resentment did not seem to exist the way it did in the Northern urban areas.

Of course that comment about housing inspectors being racist could be the influence I get from reading the liberal media. EG the past few months NYTimes has articles about how blacks were channeled into substandard housing, redlined, prevented from getting Federal subsidies for housing, forced to move for infrastructure projects and given crap houses to live, etc but NYT has a strong liberal bias that seems to assume everything bad is because of wicked white people.

On the other hand I read the Chicago Defender once. It is so far left only Mao's Red Guards are to their left. I think if a building full of black people collapsed like the Taiwan building in my opening post, they would say it was racist white contractors skimping on stuff meant for black people.

[kurplop]

I can't speak for best building practices outside the US but suspect human indiscretions are at least a part of the problem.

"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
John Steinbeck

Aren't you the construction worker? Please tell us that there are actually ways of checking. Like sounding the concrete pillar, scratching the pipe with a screwdriver, measuring voltage drop across cables, that kind of thing?

This whole reliance on inspecting is really dependent on the individual inspector, right? I can imagine a good ol Mississippi boy signing off on substandard housing for black people with a wink of his eye.

Yes, it is possible to confirm that specifications are adhered to, but at what cost? Layer upon layer of oversight, cities requiring onsite deputy inspectors to supplement city inspectors, excessive details on plans required by plan checkers, tedious documentation of the various phases of work, and this is the current state of the trade. These mechanisms already represent about 30% of construction costs. How much more can the market bear?

In my experience, most tradesmen I've worked with have been quality people that would not do something that would jeopardize the safety of another. The overall rarity of catastrophic building failures attest to the good quality of modern building construction, at least in most countries.

[Leslieann]

Even if these were just connecting walls, it is damned unacceptable to stuff styrofoam and other garbage as filler.

As for China, one thing I don't understand, is that they actually have a very effective national ID system that can tell one Zhang Li from another. You can't open a bank account or move to another city without proper id. The private companies like Alibaba do a very good job to make sure scammers don't pop up.

Westerners think that the Chinese authorities can't tell one Chinese from another but that's not true. It's lack of political will, not lack of bureaucratic power. When it comes to political commentary, rest assured that there are very few cases of the wrong Zhang Li being arrested for bad mouthing the Party.

China is very much the Wild West (as is Alibaba).
If you follow news of what goes on over there and/or do business there, you would be amazed at what all goes on.  While China is capable of amazing feats, they are unregulated enough that almost anything goes. It's very much a country in flux.

[berserkfan]

In my experience, most tradesmen I've worked with have been quality people that would not do something that would jeopardize the safety of another. The overall rarity of catastrophic building failures attest to the good quality of modern building construction, at least in most countries.

kurplop, here we bump up against a big cultural gap.

I presume you are talking about people from a Germanic-Northern European tradesman/ craftsman tradition where people talk pride in what they do.

In Chinese/ Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Singapore culture, construction work is looked down on. Nobody does this for a living if they can avoid it.

Because there is so little pride and personal investment made into construction work, our buildings suck big time. Singapore being well regulated, the structure and basics are ok. But the rest - anything the government doesn't regulate - is not.

So it is pretty common to move into a million dollar apartment, and all the tiles break up once you start putting your weight on them. Chances are the construction worker was an Indian peasant with 2 months' experience and unable to understand his Chinese foreman.