Did you know that there are more than 100 documents devoted to blast resistant/anti-terrorism design or testing for buildings?  Do you know which ones apply to you?

Our team recently sat down to review the most recent standards and guideline documents to make sure that we were all up-to-speed on the latest and greatest in our field.   The meeting left us all with a slight headache.  Below is a sample of some of the recently updated, often confusing, documents that are the current backbone of our industry.

•  The Veterans Administration has released (this year) a new version of their two Physical Security Design Manuals.   The new documents are completely reformatted but do provide additional detail as to the intent of the requirements with respect to the building facades and structures.

•  The current UFC 4-023-03 Security Engineering: Design of Buildings to Resist Progressive Collapse limits or restricts the use of Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRPs) as a retrofit to meet the tie-force requirements of the document.

•  A new version of the UFC 3-340-02 Structures to Resist the Effects of Accidental Explosions (the old TM 5-1300) was released in September of last year.  Among other things, this new version  
excludes the use of steel wire reinforcement and steel welded wire reinforcement for reinforced concrete.

•  The 2012 and 2013 versions of the UFC 4-010-01  DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings require that exterior doors be designed for blast resistance (with some exceptions that are detailed in the documents), but they also require that proof of compliance with the standard be through testing (referencing fairly new test standards) rather than analysis.   This can be a problem for door vendors who rely on analysis to show compliance, performed their testing before 2003, or who have tested a handful of doors and have extrapolated that to different configurations.

While the majority of the changes and updates make the documents better, they can make cost estimating and implementation difficult.  Knowing the differences from the older to the new documents can save a design/construction team time, money, and effort by avoiding confusion.

This is one of the topics that we will be discussing in our upcoming face-to-face blast class:  Protective Knowledge – Blast Resistance by Design (May 4 – 8 in Arlington, Virginia).  

One of our goals for the class is to help attendees better understand the implications on cost and design of the different criteria documents, and blast resistance in general.

Click here for more information for more information on the class.