Building Engineering

Building engineering studies the structural and material make-up of a building: load-bearing structure, façade, roof, floor build-up, and how these parts form one physically functioning whole. The field treats the building as an integrated system in which an intervention in one part has consequences for another: a façade change affects moisture behaviour, a roof intervention affects load capacity.

FM performs or commissions interventions on a building it did not construct. Without engineering knowledge, a seemingly simple change — hanging extra plant, moving a wall — becomes a risk only visible once it goes wrong. This knowledge gives FM the ability to spot cascade effects before a contractor reports them as variation orders.

• What consequence does this intervention have for the rest of the structure and the building physics balance?
• Is this component original or already altered, and is that alteration documented?
• What is the remaining technical service life of this component, independent of its maintenance condition?

• Structural engineering literature and construction codes (Eurocode series in Europe).
• NEN 2767 condition assessment as applied to building components.
• Materials research on the ageing of façade, roof and floor systems.

• Interventions must be tested for cascade effects, not only against the immediate goal of the intervention.
• Building engineering knowledge is the basis on which hard-service specifications (roof, façade, structure) must rest.
• Missing building records make every intervention more expensive, because assumptions replace knowledge.

• Technical management and upkeep
• Maintenance & Asset Care

• Specifying and assessing hard-service tender documents
• Management of building records and as-built drawings

• In-house (retained) delivery organisation

  An in-house technical service can build and retain building-specific engineering knowledge over time.

• Eurocode series (structural safety); NEN 2767 (condition assessment).

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• Minor building changes approved without review because they appear 'non-structural', while load path and moisture balance are in fact affected.

The combination of retrofit interventions (insulation, façade renovation) with existing, often undocumented structures is producing a growing set of unforeseen building-physics problems for which no standardised risk assessment yet exists.

• Eurocode series, overview of structural safety standards.
• NEN 2767-2, condition assessment: defects and weighting factors.