Advice from Craig
What does a structural engineer do?
The short answer
A structural engineer takes the architect’s drawings and works out what the building needs to stand up. They look at the ground conditions, the loads going on top down to the roof tiles, and how the ground moves in that area. From that they decide which steels are needed, how deep the foundations go and whether padstones are needed to carry the steels. Normally the engineer comes in after the architect and the approvals. If you have plans but no engineering pack, Madisons can help: we use two or three engineers regularly, including one who can come to site if an issue comes up during the build. Structural design is part of every internal layout change we build.
Transcript
So we do mention a lot of the time, customers come to us and they say about structural engineering, or just the build itself, or they might have a set of plans, and they say, well, okay, have you got the engineering pack? And they go, what’s an engineer? Because they’ve been to an architect that hasn’t even mentioned the fact that they need an engineer.
So an engineer is someone that will take the drawings that the architect has drawn, they will take the ground conditions, what you’re putting on, the roof, the tile, years of geo movement in the area, and just general knowledge in the area, because most of the time they do understand the areas that they work in, and then they will determine what steels are needed, how deep the foundations need to be, do we need padstones to carry steels?
So normally, you have an architect, you get your building permission done, then you contract a structural engineer. If you need that done and you haven’t had it done, yes, we can help you with that 100%. We’ve got two or three that we use all the time, one that’s based out of the area, one that’s based in the area, and one chap that will actually come around and do on-site stuff, should there be an issue during the build. So yes, we can help with a structural engineer if need be.
Transcript lightly edited for reading: filler words and false starts removed. The captions on the film are word for word.
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