The Farmers Mart Feb/Mar 2016 - Issue 44 | Seite 6

Farm News

RIDBA warns farmers to
build fit for purpose
Farmers could be held legally responsible for building collapses
»»FOLLOWING THE RECENT
spate of bad weather, the
Rural and Industrial Design
and Building Association
(RIDBA) has warned farmers to
ensure their buildings are fit for
purpose from both a moral and
legal perspective.
The moral perspective would
be living with the knowledge
that an agricultural building that
was not fit for purpose could
partially or wholly collapse and
injure or kill people or livestock
or damage machinery and
crops.
The legal perspective is
farmers now being criminally
liable, under new regulations, for
health and safety on their land.
The implications for them and
the manufacturer or supplier of
a poorly designed agricultural
building are immense.
It has been drawn to RIDBA’s
attention that more and more
farmers are asking frame
manufacturers to use the steel
frame of a new building at
the same size as an existing
building but mostly this will
mean that the new building
frame is under-designed.

EXTREME WEATHER
& DESIGN LOADS
Design loads on buildings
are being increased to ensure
the structure will remaining
standing in the increasingly
extreme weather conditions
brought about by climate
change that a few years ago
would not have been thought
possible.
A typical example of this
extreme weather is the extreme
quantity of rain that fell in
Cumbria and the North West of
England and parts of Scotland
last December and in January
and the extreme snow fall that
caused so many buildings in the
north of England and Scotland
to collapse a few years ago.
Because of this increased
risk, standards such as BS
5502:22, which sets the design
loads for agricultural buildings,
have been amended to
increase the design loads.
RIDBA advises that designing
to old standards is not only
a false economy because of
the risk of collapse but also
poses serious issues under
the Construction Design and

6 Feb/Mar 2016 www.farmers-mart.co.uk

Management (CDM) regulations
which have recently put
increasing responsibility on the
“principle designer” and any
other designer.
The CDM regulations
state the client/farmer has
a responsibility to appoint a
principle designer and ensure
that everyone appointed to
work on the project has the
necessary capabilities to
carry out the tasks required of
them.
FORESEEABLE RISK
If the client farmer sets the
steel sizes it could be argued
they are the principle designer
so under the CDM regulations
they have responsibilities
to identify and eliminate or
control foreseeable risks during
and after construction ... and
collapse caused by wind or
snow load is a foreseeable
risk.
If the client farmer is
not the principle designer
then it will probably be the
frame manufacturer and so
they would have the above
responsibilities. In fact, the

frame manufacturer will always
be A designer unless they
receive the full design from a
qualified structural engineer.
Then their responsibilities
will be when preparing
or modifying designs, to
eliminate, reduce or control
foreseeable risks that may
arise during construction, and
maintenance and use of a
building once it is built.
So in the event of a collapse,
both the client and the frame
manufacturer could, RIDBA
believes, be investigated by the
Health and Safety Executive,
and in the unfortunate
event that there is an injury,
both could be held legally
responsible.
Yet another important
issue in current agricultural
building is one of insurance.
RIDBA is aware that insurance
companies are now taking
a greater interest in correct
design as well as CE Marking,
marked most recently by a case
where an insurer declined to
insure a new building because
it is under-designed and not
covered by a CE Mark.