Building Condition Monitoring: Inspections and Records

Organising supervision

The law makes the owner or manager responsible for routine inspections of the object between technical inspections, carried out with their own staff or by engaging other business entities. How exactly to organise supervision depends on the design and the owner’s own rules. What follows is a scheme that grew out of the former industry provisions, which are no longer in force, and out of practice; treat it as a reference model, not a list of requirements.

Under this scheme, industrial buildings and structures in service are under the systematic supervision of engineering and technical staff responsible for their preservation. The owner or their authorised body sets up a service to monitor the operation of buildings and structures and appoints those responsible for correct operation, preservation and timely repair. The service is part of the enterprise structure as one of its main production and technical services and, depending on headcount, may be an independent unit or its functions may be given to the capital construction department, a construction group or operating services (the chief power engineer’s department, the transport department and so on).

All industrial buildings and structures of the enterprise, or their parts (a bay, a floor), are assigned by order of the manager to the workshops, departments and other units that occupy them. The heads of the units answer for the correct operation, preservation and timely repair of the buildings, structures or individual rooms and structures assigned to their unit. On finding deviations in the state of structures that exceed the standard values, the head of the unit informs the supervision service and organises systematic monitoring of the structures and of how defects develop. If structures or the building are in an unsafe condition, they also suspend use of the relevant part, evacuate people from the danger zone and take measures for the stability of the damaged structures until the object’s serviceability is restored.

In an accident, the staff of the supervision service must first:

• take measures to rescue and help the injured;
• put into action the accident (emergency) response plan if the enterprise has one;
• take measures to prevent further spread of destruction, fire, release of harmful substances and so on;
• set the boundary of the danger zone and restrict access to it.

Types of inspection

Besides systematic monitoring, all industrial buildings and structures undergo periodic technical inspections. By scope, inspections are general (the building or structure as a whole, including all structures, engineering equipment, external landscaping, or the whole complex of buildings and structures) and partial (individual buildings of the complex, individual structures or kinds of equipment, such as trusses or beams). By frequency they are regular (systematic) and unscheduled.

The frequency and scope of routine inspections below are taken from former industry provisions that are no longer in force, so treat them as a guide, not a requirement. For a particular object, the frequency is set by the design, the operating conditions and the owner’s decision.

Under the former provisions, regular general technical inspections were carried out twice a year, in spring and autumn.

The spring inspection (after the snow melts) refines the scope of routine repair work for the summer and identifies the scope of capital repair for next year’s plan. It should:

• check the load-bearing and enclosing structures carefully and find possible damage from atmospheric and other effects;
• identify defective places that need long-term monitoring;
• check the mechanisms and opening parts of windows, skylights, gates, doors and other devices;
• check the condition of drains, aprons and gullies and put them in order.

The autumn inspection checks how ready buildings are for winter; by then all summer routine repairs must be finished. It should:

• check the load-bearing and enclosing structures carefully and remove cracks and gaps;
• check that the roofs are ready for snow removal and that the means for it are ready, and the condition of gutters and drains;
• check that the opening elements of windows, skylights, gates, doors and other devices work and are ready for winter conditions.

Under the same provisions, the main structures of buildings with heavy crane equipment, or of those in a highly aggressive environment, were inspected once every ten days. A technical inspection of such objects, like any other, is carried out by qualified executors; the timing is set by the designer in the design, and the interval between technical inspections may not exceed 10 years. Defects found during a routine inspection are a separate ground for an unscheduled technical inspection; how that goes is described in Inspection Procedure and Passportisation.

In addition to regular ones, unscheduled inspections are done after natural disasters (fires, hurricane winds, heavy rain or snowfall, earthquakes in seismic areas) or accidents. A particularly strict inspection regime is needed for buildings and structures on undermined territories, on subsiding soils and under constant vibration. Older reference materials (not a current requirement) advised a quick survey of all structures at each routine inspection, a detailed visual check of at least 10% of load-bearing joints (with measuring tools where needed) and a record of their condition in the technical operation log. Specialists of erection or specialist organisations were brought in to inspect these joints.

Frequency of inspecting steel structures

How often routine inspections are done depends on operating conditions and intensity of action. Guide figures from the old reference table (they are not a current requirement):

Structures of installations (galleries, bunker trestles, cooling towers and the like) are inspected roughly once every three months.

Documentation for the object

The list of initial documentation given in older reference materials (the set of documents for a particular object depends on the design and on the procedure by which it was accepted for operation):

• the acceptance commission’s act on accepting the object into service;
• a list of the design, research and other organisations that took part in the design;
• a list of the organisations that carried out the construction and installation work, with the types of work and the names of the responsible engineering and technical staff;
• the set of working drawings the object was built to, with the changes made during construction;
• approved design and cost documentation and a note of the main technical and economic indicators;
• a survey scheme of the actual layout of utility networks, documents on the geodetic setting-out base and on survey work;
• documents on the allocation of land plots and permits for construction and installation work;
• documents on the geology and hydrology of the site, the results of soil testing and groundwater analysis;
• data sheets for equipment and machinery; documents certifying the quality of the materials, structures and products used;
• acts for concealed work and acts of interim acceptance of critical structures;
• acts on tests of electrical installations and networks, communication and automation devices, installed equipment, process pipelines, water supply, sewerage, gas supply, heating and ventilation systems, external networks and drainage devices;
• acts on tests of fire safety, explosion safety and lightning protection devices; acts of radiation survey;
• acts on the implementation of anti-seismic measures and of measures for construction on subsiding soils, undermined territories and karst;
• work logs and author supervision logs, and materials of state supervision inspections during construction;
• acts of acceptance of buildings, structures, premises and installed equipment drawn up by working commissions;
• a certificate that the capacities put into service match those in the design;
• certificates from utility organisations that the external utilities will ensure normal operation of the object;
• the technical passport of the building and structure.