Safety and risk in structural engineering

Safety in structural engineering is an enduring issue with a long history. Extensive rules have been developed for its management, mainly for use at the design and construction stages, but are these sufficient? Increasingly, ageing, existing structures must be assessed for continued safety. Structures are part of much larger infrastructure systems and their failure may have significant system consequences. Emerging thinking suggests that for the realistic assessment of the safety of major structures, and hence the risks involved in their failure, structural engineers will need to adopt a broad risk management perspective. This will mean the adaptation of tools and techniques drawn from risk management for other potentially hazardous facilities and used in conjunction with the well‐developed techniques unique to structural reliability analysis. Major structural engineering projects may be categorized as being ‘low‐probability—high‐consequence’ types of risk. This implies that philosophies and practices for such types of risk already developed for hazardous facilities in other industries ought to be adaptable to major structural engineering projects. It is argued that such risks have relevance also for acts of war, sabotage and terrorism, provided their assessment involves appropriate inputs. Difficult societal decision processes are involved, including the management of post‐failure scenarios.