Certification of Structural Engineering Design for Timber Frame Housing - This event has already finished

Timber frame has become the dominant form of construction for low-rise housing in Scotland and the structural certification of building designs involving timber frame forms a significant part of the workload for SER registered certifiers. SER has been working closely with the Scottish Government, Verifiers and timber frame manufacturers to establish a common standard for certification across the country and on its behalf the Centre for Timber Engineering at Edinburgh Napier University has developed a training event aimed at timber frame designers, structural certifiers and verifiers that will update knowledge and skills in this important area of construction.

On 31 March 2010, national standard institutions within the EU and European Free Trade Association are obliged to withdraw all national standards that conflict with the European Committee of Standardisation suite of Structural Eurocodes. In the UK, BSI will withdraw 57 national standards including all or most parts of well-known codes such as BS5268 for timber. Thereafter the national codes of practice for the design of buildings and civil engineering works in the UK will be the 58 parts of the 10 new BS EN Eurocodes. Eurocode 5 covers the design of timber buildings and civil engineering works and, as with the oher Eurocodes, it uses the limit-state concept instead of the traditional permissible stress method used in BS 5268.

Most public sector organisations, utilities and product manufacturers will be using the Eurocodes for all new designs from April 2010. The 2010 version of Scottish Building Standards are due to be issued in April 2010 and are anticipated to come into force on or around October 2010. As such, the Eurocodes are likely to become the pincipal means of satisfying the requirements of the relevant Regulations and Standards. Withdrawn codes may still be used on private sector buildings but designers, certifiers and verifiers will need to be satisfied that their continued use is appropriate to a particular design.

For further information, please download the flyer here