ENR Article on NIST's WTC 7 report 1

[JAE]

An interesting article on NIST's recommendations for buildings relative to their study of the WTC 7 collapse. It includes several engineer response comments that weigh in.

Seems that they are recommending that we structural engineers design for extremely "worst case" fire scenarios despite the low probability.

It also appears to imply added liability to we engineers.

http://enr.ecnext.com/coms2/article_nebuar080903a

 

[msucog]

expect to see fireproof testing frequency in codes to be increased rather significantly based on what i've seen (by factor of 4 from what i recall--from 10,000sf per member type per floor to every 2,500sf)...comes directly from nist wtc investigation. i'll dig up my reference if anyone is interested...i believe it was from the icc code development section of the iccsafe website.