Plumbing Africa October 2019 | Page 58

56 FEATURES It is crucial to use the best and most robust drainage piping for heavy-duty high-maintenance drainage. Most of all, it must have excellent watertight and airtight joints that cannot pull apart with time, including robust pipe material such as HDPE with welded joints is now used both below and above ground. The bottom line is, competent services design engineers are essential to best-practice systems design. The proposed definition of a competent services design engineer is a registered professional engineer or registered professional technologist with proven specialist experience in the design of hospital services, under the mentorship of a specialist Pr Eng or Pr Tech Eng with a minimum of five years’ experience. Anyone less qualified than that is not competent to deal with rational design. Rational design requirements A rational design must be based on a comprehensive risk assessment to prevent any contamination of the sterile environment of both the internal and external spaces of a hospital, based on the performance specification as per SANS10400-P: P2, as well as annexures A and B. The laboratory surfaces undergoing manufacture to exacting specifications. It’s all about relevance and applicability. There are only seven specific regulations relating to performance and there are more than 30 deem-to-satisfy rules, which are not relevant to rational design. The installed laboratory surfaces. www.plumbingafrica.co.za @plumbingonline @plumbingonline @PlumbingAfricaOnline October 2019 Volume 25 I Number 8