It was a quick visit up to Leeds this week for an SER seminar on the Structural Certification of Buildings in Scotland. The scheme has been running since 2005 in Scotland allowing the structural design of buildings to be covered by a certificate but the scheme has not yet been extended to England or Wales.
The scheme in Scotland requires a single person (the Certifier) to be responsible for all of the structural elements of the building. Unlike England, structural calculations must be completed by a qualified structural engineer. Having worked in England for the past year, it has been very interesting to see how the role of the engineer is very different to Scotland, with a much reduced involvement in most projects.
It was also interesting to note that the other engineers in attendance recognised that the scheme had led to an improvement of standards in Scotland. It was considered that a number of structural failures that had occurred in England would have been significantly less likely to occur if this scheme had been in place in England.