When speaking about MEICON, a question is often raised about future changes in use of a building: “If we design to 100% utilisation, this will limit future changes in use, and so I prefer to be a bit inefficient” (or words to that effect).

The MEICON project was presented during the recent LafargeHolcim Forum - https://lafargeholcim-foundation.org/forum/6th-forum. Dr Orr presented, on behalf of Chris Wise, a summary of three projects - MEICON, “Enough is Enough”, and “Marginal Gains in Construction”. The research was featured in the concluding sessions of the Forum.

In much of the work about embodied energy minimisation, we explore the structural utilisation of members in a building. This is usually defined as the ratio between an actual performance value and the maximum allowable performance value which is deemed limiting for a structural member. It allows us to explore how close to the limit state (be that serviceability or ultimate) a member is. In this post I raise two questions for further analysis.

1) How can design choice be captured in a utilisation ratio?

2) Can we define a "structural safety window"