Condition survey of a braced steel frame with no as-built drawings
A restaurant unit on the Clyde was surveyed before fit-out. The frame is braced steel with composite floors and no as-built drawings existed, so the structure had to be read from the building itself.
What the project needed.
An operator taking on a unit needs to know what they are taking on. This one is a steel frame with hot rolled universal column and universal beam sections, infill blockwork and flat bar bracing in bays, with a metal deck composite slab at first floor. No as-built structural drawings existed for the unit, which meant everything had to come from inspection rather than from paper.
Work carried out
- Non-intrusive visual structural condition survey
- Inspection of steel beams and columns from floor level
- Connections checked for missing or loose bolts where visible
- Braced bay locations and flat bar bracing recorded
- Metal deck composite floor slab reviewed
- Infill blockwork and glazed elevations assessed
- Photographic record of the structure as found
- Limitations of the non-intrusive scope stated explicitly
What mother hubbards, springfield quay actually involves.
Bracing is the thing to find first in a frame like this. Flat bar bracing set in particular bays is what provides lateral stability, and it is also the element most likely to be cut, boxed in or built around during a fit-out by someone who does not know what it is doing. Recording where it runs before work starts is what stops that happening.
Connections were inspected for missing or loose bolts wherever they were visible. On a braced frame the connections are the load path for the bracing forces, so a bolt missing from a brace connection matters far more than the same bolt missing from a secondary member.
Slight blistering was found on the steelwork with minor surface rusting. It was recorded and stated not to be a structural concern, which is the useful form of that answer: noting a defect without saying whether it matters leaves the reader exactly where they started.
The ground floor is concrete and may be a suspended slab with screed over. No tests were carried out to confirm it, and the report says so rather than assuming. Where a survey is non-intrusive there are things it cannot establish, and the limits belong in the report rather than in the reader's imagination.
Mother Hubbards, Springfield Quay
Non-intrusive structural condition survey with a photographic record of the frame, connections and bracing as found.
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