Oddbean new post about login | logout The UK's #RAAC #buildings crisis really looks like the results of a period when 'systems built' facilities were all the rage in the public sector (and more widely). In the 1970s, prefabricated buildings seemed to offer the solution to assembling functional buildings. Of course, there were two problems: a. They were never meant to last forever & so without maintenance & component renewal a crisis of stability was always going to happen; b. in many cases they were badly constructed anyway!
@43d7c4ea oh, are RAAC and systems-built the same thing? I've been wondering how linked these are, because the NAO report on schools buildings treated them as if they were fully separate? (At least it sounded to my non-expert ears that the surveying to find and understand where these were was different and had different challenges. Specifically surveying for timber framed systems-built blocks is mentioned.)
@43d7c4ea The problem with a) is that when they were built in the 1970s never-ending austerity due to ideological arguments was not yet universally accepted in the UK, so people could plan with reasonable maintenance. ad b) which bigger public building does not have some serious issue. Don't get me started on the beautiful university buildings built in the 70s/80s in Vienna, not working air vents are the tiniest of the issues, some are literally ruins by now.
@43d7c4ea This isn’t the first problem with concretes. In the early 1960s the lovely post war school I was in had to be closed for remedial work because the school hall in a similarly school had had a whole roof collapse. Then there was the whole thing with High Alumina Cement in the early seventies, similarly affecting public buildings and motorways like the M6 at Gravelly Hill. I seem to recall people went to prison for that.