Recent comments in /f/Washington

minerkj t1_j8o8x6h wrote

The structural building code (the International Building Code, IBC) in Washington in general specifies what loads must be applied to a structure (earthquake, wind, snow) and how the structure must be adequate to withstand these loads and allow all occupants to escape after an event (eg earthquake).

An engineers gain nothing if a building is over- OR under- built, as they are paid based on a finished set of plans and calculations, so it isn't fair to say engineers are shortsighted. In contrast, the owners/developers of a building want to legally build as inexpensively possible (of course) because they are a business and they can absolutely be short-sighted, but the building code still requires all structures to be engineered to allow all occupants to escape.

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AlphaSquad1 t1_j8o1vqx wrote

That depends. You don’t want to overbuild just for the sake of overbuilding, that’s just make things more expensive needlessly. We still just want to design things to meet its expected requirements, you just want to expand what those requirements are. We would definitely benefit from more infrastructure being built to last longer and be more resilient. But here in Washington we don’t really need to build things to withstand tornadoes. There’s an old saying in engineering: “Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes a good engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”

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Deep_Seas_QA t1_j8nw7nl wrote

I don’t know if this is correct but I know for San Juan Islands (and some others) they have seasonal schedules and maybe they won’t let you reserve for the next season until the schedule is posted?

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