11-21-2009, 09:27 AM
I practice in New Zealand and we are lucky enough to have all national standards with some shared with Australia, and they are still confusing and reference old obsolete standards all over the place!
Our codes are quite strong on seismic design, and in some areas differ quite markedly from overseas standards in the treatment of ductility and capacity design, so we are never going to be in a position to adopt other design standards.
I can imagine it must be 10 times worse in other countries where you have to adopt a lot of different standards, sometime where they are based on totally different premises and do not read together in a good manner.
For instance the american system of standards confuses the hell out of me, depending on which part of the country you are in you are often using completely different codes to someone in the next state.....
At least at the end of the day they all have the common goal of (hopefully) producing buildings which stand up!
Our codes are quite strong on seismic design, and in some areas differ quite markedly from overseas standards in the treatment of ductility and capacity design, so we are never going to be in a position to adopt other design standards.
I can imagine it must be 10 times worse in other countries where you have to adopt a lot of different standards, sometime where they are based on totally different premises and do not read together in a good manner.
For instance the american system of standards confuses the hell out of me, depending on which part of the country you are in you are often using completely different codes to someone in the next state.....
At least at the end of the day they all have the common goal of (hopefully) producing buildings which stand up!