Project Peer Review: Results of The Structural Failures II Conference

Abstract

The subject of project peer review of structural design was a major topic of discussion at both the 1983 Santa Barbara Engineering Foundation conference, Building Structural Failures—Their Cause and Prevention, and the 1987 follow‐up conference in Palm Coast, Florida, Structural Failures II. The deliberations of the Palm Coast conference regarding project peer review, which are the subject of this paper, resulted in the very significant recommendation that peer review of projects over a certain threshold level be made mandatory through incorporation into code provisions or by requirements of regulating authorities, and that the cost of such reviews should be borne by the owner. Several questions remain regarding the criteria and procedures of such a review, such as the threshold limits for projects that should be subject to review, the scope of the review, the liability of the reviewer, and the timing of the review. A joint committee of the ASCE and the American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC) is working to define such criteria and procedures.