Water, Sewage & Effluent November December 2018 | Page 10

System design issues (Part 1)
In our first instalment on design issues, Vollie Brink takes a look at
why hospitals should be designed like township sewers.
By Vollie Brink
T
hroughout the years, I have had
the pleasure of mentoring young
engineers and technologists,
as well as assisting and preparing
them for professional registration.
In addition, I have presented many
CPD courses for re-registration for
engineers and technologists. I have
also had the pleasure of participating
in a number of SABS working groups
and technical committees to develop
new standards and to review and
revise existing standards.
I suppose the relevance of this
background information is that, in all
of the above-mentioned activities,
8
without exception, design emerges
as the single most important focus,
since it dictates whether any project
will be successful or not. When my
CPD lectures were evaluated, I was
told that the most important element
is not the calculations — engineers
are entirely competent to do the
calculations. Rather, it is the design
information and design parameters,
and where to find this information, that
is paramount. All projects depend on
design, and design, in turn, depends
on ‘assumption’.
Any engineering project is based
on a set of assumptions, and if
Water Sewage & Effluent November/December 2018
the engineer makes the wrong
assumptions, then regardless of all
the knowledge and experience and
calculations, the project will fail and,
in some cases, even have catastrophic
consequences.
Now let’s define what is meant by
assumptions. Assumptions are based
on a degree of comfort and the degree
of comfort is related to cost, and both
form a process that has to be followed
and worked through with the owner.
In turn, the outcome of this process
provides the designer with decisions
on which to base the design.
But first, I will explain this process.
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