Code Committees 2

[kissymoose]

Does anyone here serve on any code committees or attend public discussions?

I have some interest and like the idea of serving/shaping in what capacity I can, but have concerns about the amount of time required, the chance of having too many cooks in the kitchen to be heard, or simply not knowing nearly enough to be useful.

Would love to hear some thoughts, thanks.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Are attendees involved in the conversation, speaking up or providing feedback during the meetings?

I can only speak about the process at AISC. But, the guests (like myself) were definitely involved in the conversations and feedback. I would HOPE that other organizations drafting design codes would be similar. One of the rules of the process is to allow public discussion / feedback. Technically, they could suppress this and only allow it at a late stage. However, that would go against the spirit of the process.

Now, it depends on the committee, the number of attendees, the quality of the discussion, how long the agenda is and such. But, generally there is enough time to give discussion on any item that's deemed important by an attendee.

Worst case (in my experience) is you might be asked to table the discussion until other agenda items are covered, or you might be asked to introduce it as new business that could be then discussed at the next meeting.

 

[JoshPlumSE]

Note: I should point out that I've been in a couple of meetings where we were discussing feedback from the "public review" period. And, this feedback is usually taken pretty seriously.

 

[Mohanlal0488]

@kissymoose

No, it was not difficult to get a seat.

To be honest in South Africa there are not many people interested in sitting on such committees, maybe the trend is different in other countries.

I was actually asked to join after numerous emails which I sent to the publishers with regards to queries and issues I found in a specific code of practice. The emails eventually went to the champion of the committee, who later asked if I would like to join. The queries and issues were actually found to be mistakes and typos in the new edition of the code.

To be honest I think it is good for practicing engineers to sit on these committees, one of my big reasons is that there are many engineers out there who are not very competent and relay heavily on software and further more lack the basic understanding of requirements in codes and design work. To give an example I met a senior engineer (+20 years of experience) in course I attended, he complained about solving a quadratic equation stipulated in the code (for the compressive strength of an unequal angle), stating that it was too difficult to use and solve... Personally I think it pathetic, but it's the opinions of these types of people who also influence the codes and actually restrict it's growth. It is a topic that comes up in many meetings, the complaint that engineers find things to mathematical or complex to use.

Being a practicing engineer also allows you to voice the opinions of many of your colleagues and assist in growing and shaping codes. Obviously this works as a negative if you have the mentality of the gentleman I described.