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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
June 2023 #15287 Page #80
Adverti$$er
Design Connections
Preventing Truss Collapses Geordie Secord, Senior Recruiter TheJobLine.com – Canada
O
ver the many years I’ve worked in the truss business, I’ve had the unfortunate experience of visiting numerous job sites where the trusses have collapsed. Without fail, every one of those collapses has been the direct result of improper bracing, improper hoisting, or a combination of both. In all but one case, the collapse occurred during construction. Fortunately, I have not been involved in any cases where there were fatalities, but there have been a number of people injured to varying extents. There are great resources available that provide invaluable guidance on this topic, most notably is Building Component Safety Information – Guide to Good Practice for Handling, Installing, Restraining & Bracing of Metal Plate Connected Wood Trusses, or BCSI for short. There is no need for me to go into any great level of discussion about the contents of this guide, but I would say that if you are in the truss business and you are not familiar with the contents of BCSI, you should be. How can you expect your clients to properly install your product if you don’t fully understand the importance of proper handling and bracing yourself? So rather than go over BCSI contents, I’m going to discuss a couple of common scenarios I have observed that led to trusses coming down. I should also say that every case of trusses collapsing I have witnessed involved longer span trusses, being used on either commercial or agricultural buildings. This is not to say that I think installers working on single family houses are necessarily doing a better job on following BCSI recommendations, I just believe that the factors leading to collapses are lessened by the nature of typical residential construction: relatively short spans, trusses in varying directions, shorter runs of the same truss. I also want to make it clear that I am not an engineer, and that you should seek advice from a professional engineer experienced in truss systems for further guidance.
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