
### Codes of Practice and Design Guidance Documents

As professional engineers, our work is almost always guided by codes of practice (sometimes the term _standard_ will be used) and design guidelines. These guidelines and codes of practice enforce a certain uniformity on the design process. Rather than restricting the engineer, this uniformity greatly increases the speed and efficiency of our work. It enhances our ability to collaborate and ultimately produce safe and structurally efficient designs. If first principles mechanics and fundamental engineering principles are the bedrock of analysis and design, codes of practice are a unifying layer that sits on top, making sure we're all, more or less, designing to the same levels of safety and efficiency.

I've mentioned two classes of documents, codes of practice and design guidelines. I make a loose distinction between the two; codes of practice, for example, the suite of Eurocodes, are generally developed and maintained by pan-national organisations and act as a source of accepted design principles and rules. We typically design _in accordance with_ a certain suite of codes of practice. Doing so, is shorthand for saying that we've adopted the procedures, principles, and norms set out in that suite of codes. Therefore the client or any other third party can infer a huge amount of information about how the structure has been designed and built.

Design guidelines are very similar to codes of practice and in many cases are derived from codes of practice but don't generally exist as a single unifying suite of documents with overarching design philosophies. They are often produced by different organisations within different industries and tend to provide guidance on topics not explicitly addressed in the codes of practice. Niche areas are also often addressed by design guidelines before eventually being addressed by codes of practice. Examples of design guidlines are the _Design Manuals_ produced by [The Institution of Structural Engineers](https://www.istructe.org/) (IStructE), for example, the _Green book_ for concrete design, and the excellent suite of handbooks produced by [The Concrete Centre](https://www.concretecentre.com/) in the UK.

These documents also evolve over time, sometimes due to the evolving state of research in a field and sometimes due to organisational changes. For example, much of my design work as a student and graduate engineer was guided by British Standards. I still have many dog-eared copies of different standards on my shelf; BS8110 for Reinforced Concrete Design, BS5950 for Steel Design and BS6399 for loading. Some of these may still be used in your part of the world. But for me, these have been replaced, some years ago now, by Eurocodes. Since these are what I'm now most familiar with, all of the material in this course will be based on Eurocodes.

### 2.0 Eurocodes

The Eurocodes are produced by the Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN). This is the European standards agency and it is made up of a number of national standards agencies that produce national standards with the Eurocodes (Euronorms) as their basis. Nationalisation of the core code allows for localisation of various parameters where necessary in the code of practice. These are known as Nationally Determined Parameters (NDPs) and are contained within National Annexes (NAs) to the core Eurocode document. Always refer to the NAs that relate to your region. In the UK, the Eurocodes are published as National Standards by the British Standards Institute (BSI). The suite of standards is as follows:

- Basis of structural design (Eurocode 0)

- Actions on structures (Eurocode 1)

- Design of concrete structures (Eurocode 2)

- Design of steel structures (Eurocode 3)

- Design of composite steel and concrete structures (Eurocode 4)

- Design of timber structures (Eurocode 5)

- Design of masonry structures (Eurocode 6)

- Geotechnical design (Eurocode 7)

- Design of structures for earthquake resistance (Eurocode 8)

- Design of aluminium structures (Eurocode 9)

The Eurocodes most relevant to our discussion in this course will be _Basis of structural design (EC0)_, _Actions on structures (EC1)_ and obviously _Design of concrete structures (EC2)_.

#### 2.1 Basis of structural design (EC0)

This is unofficially given the designation EC0 or Eurocode 0. In the UK, this is published as BS EN 1990. This contains the principles and information for the design of civil engineering structures that is **material independent**. All of the other Eurocodes must therefore be used in conjunction with EC0 which can be considered an overarching code.

#### 2.2 Actions on structures (EC1)

This deals with determining design actions (loading) on structures. Eurocodes generally use the term _action_ in place of force or loading. Published in the UK as BS EN 1991, this standard has the following parts:

- Part 1-1: General actions - densities, self-weight and imposed loads

- Part 1-2: General actions - actions on structures exposed to fire

- Part 1-3: General actions - snow loads

- Part 1-4: General actions - wind loads

- Part 1-5: General actions - thermal actions

- Part 1-6: General actions - actions during execution

- Part 1-7: General actions - accidental actions

- Part 2: Traffic loads on bridges

- Part 3: Actions induced by cranes and machinery

- Part 4: Actions on structures - silos and tanks

#### 2.3 Design of concrete structures (EC2)

This is obviously the main document that will govern our design in this course. It is published in the UK as BS EN 1992 and consists of the following parts:

- Part 1-1: General rules, and rules for buildings

- Part 1-2: Structural fire design

- Part 1-3: Precast concrete elements and structures

- Part 1-4: Lightweight aggregate concrete with closed structure

- Part 1-5: Structures with unbonded and external prestressing tendons

- Part 1-6: Plain concrete structures

- Part 2: Reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges

- Part 3: Liquid retaining and containing structures

- Part 4: Design of fastenings for use in concrete

### 3.0 Useful design guidelines and references

In addition to the core Eurocode documents, there is a huge number of additional design guidance documents that you may find helpful. As mentioned above, those produced by The Institution of Structural Engineers, and the Concrete Centre are particularly helpful. Some examples include:

- _Manual for the design of building structures to Eurocode 1 and the Basis of Structural Design_ (The Institution of Structural Engineers)

- _Manual for the design of Concrete Building Structures to Eurocode 2_ (The Institution of Structural Engineers)

- _Concrete Buildings Scheme Design Manual_ (The Concrete Centre)

- _Concise Eurocode 2_ (The Concrete Centre)

It's always helpful to have some reference texts to hand too. I've always found _Reinforced Concrete Design to Eurocode 2_ by Mosley, Bungey and Hulse to be an excellent and concise resource. A more extensive resource text is _Reinforced Concrete Design to Eurocode 2_ by Toniolo and di Prisco, published by Springer. And of course, the little red _Structural Engineer's Pocket Book_ by Fiona Cobb should never be allowed to stray too far from your desk!

Now that we've established the guidance framework that we're operating within, we'll move on in the next lecture to start discussing how to determine the loads or actions that we need to design for.


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