Site Hoarding Collapse - Don't risk it!
Updated: Mar 21, 2019
Site hoardings are an essential part of good site management, helping to keep construction sites secure, protect the public from site activities and contain construction dust and debris. Unfortunately collapses causing injury, disruption and damage are all too frequent and avoidable with appropriate design.
High wind loads
The amount of load the seemingly simple site hoarding can experience is often hard to intuitively appreciate. If you’ve ever tried carrying 8’ x 4’ board in even a moderate wind you might have a better feel for it!
In addition to wind, there can be crowd loads and general site activity loads that can occur simultaneously with high winds, making it harder to appreciate the magnitude of forces without calculation.
Hoarding Failure
An errant sheet of ply sailing on a gale force wind is a force to be reckoned with. So too is being struck by or crushed under the weight of a long length of collapsed hoarding. Hoarding failures can have serious, life-changing consequences for those unfortunate enough to be caught in their path, as some of the cases linked to below demonstrate.
No Structural Design: Guilty
Contractors have legal obligations to take reasonable practical steps to ensure the health and safety of workers and the general public, as outlined in everyone's favourite read the 'Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974' (HSWA) and (no doubt your 2nd favourite read) the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015).
There are numerous examples of contractors being taken to court and being handed substantial fines after hoardings they installed without structural design failed and caused injury or damage:
The Structural Safety organisation (SCOSS / CROSS) have received numerous reports of hoarding failures, with consequences ranging from inconvenience and damage to property to injury and even death and make the recommendation that hoardings are designed on a site specific basis:
The Temporary Works forum (TWf) has also stated it has concerns with hoardings, relating to:
Inadequate or no hoarding design on some sites.
Use of inadequate materials, often with inadequate durability.
Insufficient consideration on inspection and maintenance.
In response, it has released guidance on good practice for the design of hoardings that should form the basis of any competent hoarding design.
Site specific structural design
The common theme in nearly all of cases of collapse is high winds and no structural design. Getting your site hoarding designed by a suitably qualified Structural Engineer is a sensible and low cost way to demonstrate reasonable and practical steps have been taken, reduce the risk of hoarding failure and mitigate against being found liable or negligent if a failure does occur.
Naturally, we're not writing this just for fun, and here at Smartbuild Engineering we provide a fast and competitively priced service for the structural design of site hoardings. We design each hoarding specifically for its location, taking into account site specific details such as local wind loads, ground conditions and crowd loading. There is no need for us to visit site so we can design your hoarding wherever your site may be.
Find out more about our Hoarding Structural Design service here or contact us for a quote or further information.