Building Regs

It's not deliberate, but I always seem to feel the need to blog on a Monday. Don't know why - must be a post-weekend backlash I suppose. Anyay, I digress..........

Building Regs. Back in the dim and distant past the Structural Engineers submitted the detailed plans to "Building Control Services" at the district council. The idea is that they assess the proposed design against the "Building Regulations" and either approve it, reject it, or approve it with certain stipulations. Well, I omitted to blog it at the time, but on 14th April we received a copy of a letter saying that our plans "have been passed under the Building Regulations, subject to conditions". There was no sign of the conditions attached to the letter, so we wrote to the Structural Engineers asking for a copy.

Now, avid readers (if I still have any left) may remember that the relationship with the Structural Engineers did not finish on the best of terms. See my March 16th entry. Needless to say, we have not received anything from them since then. Instead, Jan decided to phone "Building Control Services" to find out what the conditions were. She was told that normal practice is to send the cover letter to the client, and the detailed response to the Agent only, because (their words) "we do not expect the general public to understand it". Of course she then demanded (sorry - politely requested) that a copy be sent to us.

So, now we have a copy of the conditions under which our extension design has been passed against Building Regs, and I have to say, Building Control were absolutely right. We, paid up members of the General Public, don't understand them !

The problem seems to be that they make no reference at all to the submitted material (plans, written specification, structural calculations etc.). I am a Software Engineer with 23 years experience. I have been the recipient and author of numerous sets of comments on design documentation in that time. You always base your comments on what you are actually reviewing. The basic idea of reviewing a design is that you point out where the design does not adequately meet the requirement, where assumptions have been made that may not be valid, and where there are blatant mistakes. Cross Reference against pages, sections, paragraph numbers - anything to make it clear what your comments relate to. Why should this be any different ?

Maybe I am being harsh. Perhaps what the conditions are trying to point up, are areas where the design is inadequate, or does not address particular regulations at all. I need to read them a little more closely, and perhaps follow up some of the references.

Still the base message is good. The plans have passed. Over the phone, Jan was told that there was no need for a re-planning excercise - it should be possible for the Building Control representative allocated to our project, and our contractors, to iron out these conditions on-site before construction begins.

I don't know what I'm ranting about really - I should find something more useful to do like making the Childrens sandwiches for school tomorrow !