In
early 2006 several buildings in Central and Eastern Europe collapsed under
heavy snow loads revealing severe
shortcomings as well in planning,
construction and erection as in maintenance and inspection. Although extensive
and complete building codes (e.g. EUROCODE, national standards) should prevent
building
structures from collapse it became obvious that observation of
standards is necessary but not sufficient to assure life time integrity of
structures. Referring to the situation in Germany codes for the inspection of
structures existed only for bridges and some special constructions and more
general for civil structures belonging to the German Railways. As a reaction of
the collapse of an ice stadium in Bad Reichenhall the federal government
decided to issue a regulation for the inspection of all buildings under their possession.
In September 2006 a more general advice was published by the conference of the
ministers of the ”Länder” responsible for civil engineering. Based on
inspections on more than 700 buildings done by TIS and LGA starting in 2006
this contribution will show that
structural integrity of buildings cannot be
achieved only by inspections but that adequate measures must be implemented in
all phases of their life cycle.