Thanks to a High School Student
My eldest step-son Jake, started a Facebook Group for students where he taught Physics at Lenore City in Tennessee. One of his students shared this with the group:
“Three professionals, a mathematician, a physicist and an engineer, took their final test for their job. The sole question in the exam was “how much is one plus one”.
The mathematician asked the receptionist for a ream of paper, two hours later, he said: I have proven it’s a natural number.
The physicist, after checking parallax error and quantum tables said: it’s between 1.9999999999, and 2.0000000001
The engineer quickly said: oh! It’s easy! It’s two,…. no, better make it three, just to be safe.”
While the average citizen probably does not think about it, they walk or drive by engineer designed structures every day. Why is it not a thought? Because engineered buildings rarely, if ever, fall down.
In the post frame building industry, Hansen Buildings deals with Registered Professional Engineers pretty much every day. It is thanks to years of schooling, field experience, and real life design work these design professionals perform which makes our pole buildings as safe as they are.
In my mind, if a design error is going to be made, let’s have it made on the side of caution.
Today’s Building Codes are not quite like the earliest of codes.
Building codes have a long history. What is generally accepted as the first building code was in the Code of Hammurabi which specified:
If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then the builder shall be put to death.
If it kills the son of the owner, the son of the builder shall be put to death.
If it kills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay, slave for slave, to the owner of the house.
If it ruins goods, he shall make compensation for all which has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means.
If a builder builds a house for someone, even though he has not yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means.
Even though we are not using the Code of Hammurabi today, most engineers (fortunately) treat their structural design work as if their lives depended upon it. I would not think of constructing any type of building – without a Professional Engineer having his/her seal of approval on it. Cost of the engineer’s stamp? Minimal compared to the value of my wife, children and others who are in and out of my pole buildings on a daily basis.
