Your Views!!

With TG.20 now in place and the oneness solely on the designer in more than just a basic scaffold, should on all large projects a design engineer be based?
with the need to meet deadlines in today's fast moving industry and time elapsing with liaising with an engineer your thoughts on this please guys...

Yes.

If nearly all jobs need a design now, then yes.
Otherwise it'll lead to problems, if you have to alter/come away from the Drawing.

But, having said that... most of the bigger jobs ive worked on have several on-site Engineers anyway.


Touting for work Meercat mate?

No mate not touting for work, just fed up with having to email designers every day.
My thoughts are that we should have one based on site, being that t's to cross and I's to dot daily.

I'm not the best one to comment on this as the jobs we are on could never sustain a full time scaffold engineer but as you say meercat there are plenty out there that could. I couldn't imagine it happening though especially as we are only now beginning to see the clients supplying drawings instead of asking the scaffold companies outsourcing it and the designers being paid more than once for the same drawing.

Maybe a bit naive but I have high hopes for the tg20 re-write so I would wait to see what that could bring before asking for major changes to any system.

Morning Meercat,
good luck with that!!!
Scaffold Designers/Engineers are like rocking horse sh1t and good ones are ever fewer and further between. I remember when SGB had 32 Scaffold Designers as they were called in those days I think they now have 3. Nearly all work is out sourced now and as a result the cost would be prohibitive and I would think best value would not be attained.
The industry has been pushed into a position where more and more scaffolds require design but rest assured Most Engineers do not want to be involved in the day to day scaffolds that we have built for 40-50 years without further design input than that which had made these structures possible in the first place.
That said when the likes of SGB had 32 Designers throughout the UK there would still not be enough to achieve what you would like to see.
regards
Alan

The construction industry or whats left of it is going to come to a grinding halt due to the lack of scaffolding design engineers having to produce drawings and calculations for the simplest of jobs [bread and butter scaffolds to your average scaffolder]this backward step surely cannot get the country back on its feet after this terrible recession, to put it simply there are not enough design engineers to cover the amount of work that is being forced upon them

It is common practice within the Oil and Gas Service Companies to have an in-house Scaffold Design Team based at the Head Office. I generate schematic's of the Structures which require Drawings and send them to the Design Department, the Designer sends me back the generated Drawings and allied calculations which is duly applied and filed for retrieval if required...

Scaffolds that are erected for Planned Maintenance ( 6 month, 1 year ect ect can be filed and used ) as the occasion demands...

Im not quite sure about the Domestic and Commercial Construction Industry, perhaps ( for a stand alone Scaffolding Company ) the costs of generating Design Drawings may prove prohibitive on a regular basic, indeed, the cost of Drawings may exceed the profitability of the actual Scaffold to be erected , and that Brothers is where the paradox is...

Garry...

Wait and see what TG20:13 says next year ....can't wait

Paul

Cant wait either wonder what they are going to come out with---surly cant be much left to cover ??? OR is there, might be a little something regarding the Impact Wrench and its application ???

Garry...

RedViking said:

Wait and see what TG20:13 says next year ....can't wait

Click to expand...

I will be happy if I can put a beam in without an engineer telling me it wont fall down.

Garry Adams said:

It is common practice within the Oil and Gas Service Companies to have an in-house Scaffold Design Team based at the Head Office. I generate schematic's of the Structures which require Drawings and send them to the Design Department, the Designer sends me back the generated Drawings and allied calculations which is duly applied and filed for retrieval if required...

Scaffolds that are erected for Planned Maintenance ( 6 month, 1 year ect ect can be filed and used ) as the occasion demands...

Im not quite sure about the Domestic and Commercial Construction Industry, perhaps ( for a stand alone Scaffolding Company ) the costs of generating Design Drawings may prove prohibitive on a regular basic, indeed, the cost of Drawings may exceed the profitability of the actual Scaffold to be erected , and that Brothers is where the paradox is...

Garry...

Click to expand...

Morning Gary
I worked off shore for a number of years out of Easington and almost everything needed a design but in those days I would drive up from London at 2 in the morning for the 6am flight do the rounds of 4 or 5 platforms picking up design work and drive back to London the same evening. I would then produce the designs along with my other onshore design work.

But as you say if there is a competent person available on site other than the Engineer it would be far mor effective for them to take details and adequate information, digital photos etc, send this to the engineer and perhaps they could get a reasonable understanding from this.
It is always worth remembering that whilst an Engineer is traveling to a site he is not producing a drawing!!

regards
Alan

Assalamo Alikum

Keef halik Alan

I concur, perhaps in these modern times it may prove more prudent to embrace digital Technologies to generate and transport Design Drawing and Calculations over vast areas of distance more efficiently, long has the days gone when the Scaffolder would have devised the correlation of a bespoke Scaffold Structure on the back of a beer mat eh LOL...

With the onset of software packages that can do virtually every thing apart from actually erecting the Scaffold--- Design is becoming more accessible to the lay Man, HOWEVER,the Design and Calculations must be ratified and confirmed by a Qualified Engineer---perhaps one Day we shall see a new Scaffolding Engineering Qualification ???.

Garry...

Garry Adams said:

Assalamo Alikum

Keef halik Alan

I concur, perhaps in these modern times it may prove more prudent to embrace digital Technologies to generate and transport Design Drawing and Calculations over vast areas of distance more efficiently, long has the days gone when the Scaffolder would have devised the correlation of a bespoke Scaffold Structure on the back of a beer mat eh LOL...

With the onset of software packages that can do virtually every thing apart from actually erecting the Scaffold--- Design is becoming more accessible to the lay Man, HOWEVER,the Design and Calculations must be ratified and confirmed by a Qualified Engineer---perhaps one Day we shall see a new Scaffolding Engineering Qualification ???.

Garry...

Click to expand...

Wa alaikum assalaam Gary
I’d be surprised if most Engineers were not already working electronically to be honest.
I only know of a couple of die hards still using the pencil.
That said the resultant output from Engineers can be (and in my own case is) sent around the world via email to sites I may never have or never will see.
There is a vast difference between the output of a CAD based estimating program and being a scaffold Designer/Engineer cracking out freestanding rolling roofs over 30m spans or shores holding up a row of houses. There has never been a specific training course dedicated to scaffolding Engineering, it’s a bit like French polishing a dark art passed down through the generations to the chosen few who could keep the secrets safe LOL.
The days of training by the big firms are long gone now and the elder statesmen of design are getting old and leaving the industry. It will be an interesting few years until I pack this game in.
regards
Alan

Interesting thread this...

I feel that the main problem stems from a lack of planning and foresight on construction sites. Everyone has been in the position where you are forced to do things last minute because the client didn't realise they needed it. Reason for this vary, but usually are due to a lack of understanding of temporary works and associated requirements and procedures on the main contractors part.

We have a site running at the moment which is huge where everything is designed... all sizes, some scaffolds are challenging & complex, some are so straight forward it's crazy. We were asked to provide an engineer on site full time.. however, the service we provide doesn't involve this.

We go to site once or twice a week to look at the complicated ones. All the basic ones (which a competent scaffolder has put up whilst sleeping) are photographed and emailed to us. Then if there is a big surge of work we can employ our entire design team to work on the designs and get them out quickly, when things are slow, one one or none of the team are working on them. This way we can accomodate the peaks and troughs of the workflow and our client is not paying for a guy on site the entire time.

Re: scaffolding design qualification. This has been discussed many times.. maybe one day we will see it. But the implications of getting it up and running are pretty big.

My view is that scaffold design is a facet of structural engineering and to say it's anything less is doing it an injustice. So to design it you need to understand the principles of structural engineering.. and essentially practice as a professional structural engineer. So to become a scaffold design engineer you need to go and get the industry standard structural or civil engineering qualifications at college/university.. then start your specialisation. In the same way engineers specialising in other forms of temporary works or permanent works would.

What would be great is if the IStructE or ICE could come together with the temporary works forum and existing scaffold design engineers and produce CPD training modules covering all the different aspects of scaffold design.. all of it!! Then once they had completed their HND/Degree they could complete these and then they would be right on track for becoming a competent scaffold design engineer.

Anyway.. thats a rant. You guys make some really good points and I agree, something needs to happen.

B.

As BMB says, having a full time scaffold design engineer is unlikely to be the ideal solution for many sites, due to the fluctuating nature of the work load. Even if it were, there aren't nearly enough design engineers to make it feasible on more than a handful of sites. The best (and most realistic) solution is to build relationships between contractors / designers to provide reliable advice and support. Easier said than done with the lack of qualified designers of course!

As for qualifications, the lack of a specific course in scaffold design isn't a problem. Scaffold design is a subset of civil/structural engineering, and should not be viewed any differently than other specialities are. After all, nobody leaves university fully trained for any engineering job - on the job training from experienced engineers is always required. The only thing that can really be done is for existing engineers to take on and train new staff, who already have the necessary grounding in engineering principles.

It may be that civil / structural engineering courses could do with more content related to temporary works, although I hear that at least some universities are already pursuing this. Also, as BMB says, some relevant CPD would be valuable in ensuring the competency of designers.