Research finds civil engineers are not up to speed with Eurocodes leaving them vulnerable to potential litigation

A firm of consultants has said professionalism is 鈥渇alling short鈥 in the UK construction industry because of a poor understanding of Eurocodes.

The pan-European building codes were developed by the European Committee for Standardisation and should have been fully adopted in the UK from 2 April this year when British Standard codes for construction stopped being updated.

However, research carried out by McBains Cooper found that the majority of construction industry professionals are 鈥渂lissfully unaware鈥 of the Eurocodes and that two-thirds of civil engineers feel 鈥渦ncomfortable鈥 with them and are still designing and specifying buildings to outdated British Standards.

Paul Cowton of McBains Cooper said: 鈥淥nly around a third of civil engineers said they鈥檝e received any Eurocodes training. It鈥檚 a ticking time bomb, and sooner or later there鈥檚 going to be a slip up resulting in litigation at the very least鈥.

British Standards for building will be withdrawn completely in 2013.

Cowton added that: 鈥淪o far as we can see, the vast majority of professionals in building design simply don鈥檛 know about Eurocodes, but the front-line engineers do.

鈥淚f something goes wrong, there is huge potential for litigation, because they鈥檙e not designing to current best standards or using current best practice. There is a strong potential for legal action under duty of care鈥.

The EU directive says that national codes were to be withdrawn on 31st March 2010, and the BSI has confirmed they are complying with that directive and will not be supporting changes to British Standards beyond March. The updating of 好色先生TV Regulations to reflect this directive will not take place until 2013.