Best of LME Live: Really Big Design Codes

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Brian Brenner: I was teaching bridge class last night, and I brought along a copy of the 2007 American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials LRFD code. This challenging document is 4.5″ thick and requires a specially designed binder to fit all the paper. In 2010, it seems that the code authors gave up with the single-binder approach and opted for two fat binders—Volumes 1 and 2.

It’s good news, sort of, that the computer makes it possible to download and access all of the code information without the need for binders on steroids. For old-fashioned bridge engineers, the explosively thick new code is difficult to handle in its traditional paper form.

Back in the day, the entire bridge design code fit in more modest binders. While perhaps not perfect, the bridges designed under the old codes seemed to do OK. It’s not clear how we’ve benefited by increasing the code length by what seems like a factor of 5. The new code and new requirements also require a 16-hour SE exam, doubling the previous length. With the current rate of code growth, possibly exams in the future will need to be a full week long.

There is no doubt that all of the increased detail and complexity in the code are warranted and valuable. All of the individual components are debated and vetted by various subcommittees. But it seems like the overall process is out of control. At some point, the code can’t continue to increase in thickness, even with computers. Ice cream tastes great, and little bites here and there are a good thing. But if you continue to eat too much ice cream without moderation, you get fat.

Dave Devine: I have certainly experienced much the same issue. I had a copy of ASCE 7 Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures when I was a student, only back in the late 1980s! It was a modest booklet of about 100 or so pages. When I have taken it and compared it to current versions, particularly showing it in class, the book is now several hundred pages and there are other volumes for some of the chapters to explain in more detail.

Having so much information available on the Internet is truly a valuable resource library, though.

Certainly some of the added pages are due to more discovery of how to better model and use design loads. However, I also wonder if the effort is to become more of just a code or standard that can handle all situations, in essence taking the professional judgment out of the situation.

I never used a luggage roller cart to get from class to class, either, and the loads some students carry around, particularly on nonresident campus locations, are crazy. Books filled with fancy graphics to attract the reader’s attention really distract me a great deal. As an instructor, it seems to me that books, textbooks and otherwise, are not read much at all and hardly opened by many students, although they certainly continue to purchase them, only to resell them at the end of the semester.

I participated in a National Engineer Week visit to a local engineering firm when I was in high school. I recall an engineer offering the advice to “keep your books, you will use them.” I have kept my books and have used several over the years. The space is running out, though, and I am not keeping up with modern editions. $F=ma$ in all versions I have seen, and $Q=VA$ also.

I should also note that I like to eat ice cream, and my waist is now much bigger than even a few years ago, but certainly not by a factor of 5, as Brian suggests the code has increased.

An e-mail exchange with members of the ASCE Committee on Licensure and Ethics recently included a comment in response to the following: “The new, 16-hour SE exam will be offered beginning in April 2011. The separate Structural I and II exams are no longer offered” (National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying website, http://www.ncees.org/Exams/SE_exam.php). The comment was that if a 4- or 8-hour exam was not sufficient, why would a 16-hour exam be sufficient? Is just more stuff, hours of an exam, pages in a code, or gee, even ASCE PS 465 $\mathrm{BS}+30$, axiomatic that it is better?

Although I do not have direct knowledge of this, I have heard on repeated occasions that some state legislatures are limiting BS degrees to 120 credit hours. This would be 8 semesters of 15 credits, basically five standard 3-credit-hour classes per term for a traditional 4 years of college study. I hear this most often when discussion of the $\mathrm{BS}+30$ topic and its need is explained as being that a college degree is not what it used to be. Downsizing occurs also, as well as the upsizing in codes.

Tom Gilbert: More code complexity = more opportunity for error.