The Importance of Structural Integrity in Construction

24 February 2022

Many aspects of construction works must be assessed and monitored by contractors to ensure that their projects can be completed effectively. One of these aspects is structural integrity.

Structural integrity entails the reliability of a structure or its structural components to support their weight and prevent deformation, breakage, and any types of catastrophic failure through their predicted building life. The structural integrity of a property, however, does not only rely heavily on its general design. A property can retain its structural integrity if it is assessed and maintained periodically.

Main Causes of Structural Failure

The structural integrity of a building may depend heavily on its initial design and long-term upkeep. However, there are numerous reasons why the structural integrity of specific buildings tends to fail despite executing the initial design well and maintaining them effectively. Some of them are as follows:

• Weak or Defective Materials– One of the reasons why certain buildings have poor structural integrity is they are built out of weak or defective materials. When planning for a building structure, one component that contractors must consider heavily is the expected load of the property. Once the expected load is obtained, they must attain materials that can handle the obtained load value. Failure to do this will only result in a building that is bombarded with structural-related issues.
• Inappropriate Geometric Design– Another reason why structural failure happens to several properties is they maximise inappropriate geometric design. Opting for a good geometric design can save a structure and its structural components from corrosion, creep, fatigue, and wear. Alternatively, going for an inappropriate design will only result in structural deterioration, yielding damages that can be costly to repair. Worse, it might lead to the sudden failure of the building.
• Neglected Surrounding Elements– One more reason why buildings may have structural failure is due to negligence during their planning phase. Contractors, especially engineers, have to assess the environmental considerations first before crafting designs and processes that will make buildings durable and functional. Now, neglecting to mitigate environmental elements will only result in properties that have weakly supported structures.

Ensure Structural Steel Welding

One way to ensure that a building will possess excellent structural integrity is through professional structural steel welding processes.

Structural steel welding aims to ensure that a building will have a solid and robust framework. Some of the processes involved during structural steel welding are generation, fabrication, and erection of welded structures. But before these processes are conducted, contractors must ensure first that they have crafted, studied, and verified the blueprints for the project. They must also integrate the correct types of weld joints as well as respect and follow the standard codes.

If you want to ensure that your structure will not fail, you can contact us at Sharp Welding and Crane Hire. We offer quality structural steel welding and fabrication works that follow the standard codes and other regulatory requirements. With two fully equipped vehicles, we can fulfil any type of on-site welding needs necessary to ensure a solid and stable framework for structures.

On top of this, we provide additional welding services in our fully equipped workshop.