A Change of the Structural Design Code from BS to Eurocode

Have you heard the rumors that Malaysia want to change the BS (British Standard)to Eurocode??. This is one of the issue that give the significant implication to civil & structural engineering practice in Malaysia. Even though before this BS is inheritance from British,but the change of this code of practice is hoped not giving to much difficulties to engineers in order to understand the principle of Eurocode. By the way, according to Ir. MC Hee, Vice-President of IEM, there are some changes of the terms only, for example in BS the term of dead load and live load are used but in Eurocode these terms are permanent load and variable load respectively.It may a bit difficult to local engineer to grasp the principle of Eurocode. Ir. Hee also pointed out that the Eurocodes is actually a perfermance code which has more advantage over BS 8110. Ir. Hee added that the utilisation of Eurocodes will be beneficial in long term. The latter is a state-of-the-art code and contains many improvements which one cannot find in the British Standard.

Nevertheless, the introduction of Eurocodes will still have an effect on engineering practice in general. As for this case, the author hope the implementation of this Eurocode can be implemented stage by stage. All the local university need to adopt the Eurocode in their curriculum especially for civil engineering syllabus. The professional boards such as BEM & IEM also can give the intensive course to engineers before this code of practice is implemented in Malaysia.

As the conclusion, the author need to highlight that the fundamental of designing the structure is just the same, the code of practice is only the guidline to engineer for designing the particular stucture. Last but not least...remember this words of wisdom, "no design codes can replace strong engineering fundamentals, codes do not design buildings, engineers do".

(Ref.JURUTERA september 2009)