Standards of Seismic Safety for Existing Federally Owned and Leased Buildings (RP 8) questions

[mlevario99]

I have an Architect that is going after an interior renovation of an existing building leased by the government. The government has leased this building for the past 15 years I believe, and they plan to remodel the inside. The Architect contact us and ask us to help him out, he give us the Seismic Forms from the government, Form A - Certificate of Seismic Compliance Benchmark Building, Form B - Certificate of Seismic Compliance Existing Buidling, and Form C - Building Retrofit or New Construction Pre-Award Commitment. I was reading from A, and they refer you to Standards of Seismic Safety for Existing Federally Owned and Leased Buildings (RP 8), on this document there are some exemptions on page 7, which this buiding does not qualifies for, so I was looking for the Benchmark building, according to form A, A benchmark building is one that was designed and built or retrofitted in accordance with structural provisions that are considered to provide acceptable life-safety protection. RP 8, Section 1.3, Table 1-1 shows the cosntruction codes that qualify a building as a Benchmark Building. If a building qualifies, no additional hazards need be considered. If the seismicity of a region has changed since the benchmark dates listed in the table, the buidling must be evaluated in accordance with the now current or greater seismicity of the region to be compliant with the RP 8 Standards.

Ok, so I look table 1-1 as the document suggested, the building is a steel brace built in the 90's, we do no thave the construction documents, but is believe to be deisgned under the UBC 1997. Under table 1-1, under steel braced frame and UBC, they give you 1997 as the cut off year, but then, on the top of the column, there is a note 10, if you read it, it says, "Only buildings designed and cosntructed or evaluated in accordance with these documents and being evaulated to the Life-Safety (LS) performance levelmay be considered benchmark buildigns". The way I understand because of this note 10, is that all buildings have to be evaluated to the Life-Safety, which is on chapter 3 of this document, and at that point you have to use ASCE/SEI 31.

Is this correct? Am I reading this correct?

Also, because of the year it was built, we had seismics zones before, and now under the IBC we have different parameters for seismic, does that means also that the building has to be in compliant with RP 8 Standrads.

Thanks

 

[jvvse]

That was a lot of reading!

The 1997 UBC designs for Life Safety, so if you can prove that it was in-fact designed for that code then you should be in the clear. Otherwise you will have to use ASCE 31 to verify the building.

I couldn't tell you about the other forms, I have only limited experience with Federally owned buildings and what I do required ASCE 31.

 

[mlevario99]

jvvse, even if the building is classified as benchmark because of the code use on the design, the building still needs to be evaluated for Tier 1 for foundations and nonstructural elements, correct?

thanks