A users survey on building structural design: Safety vs economy

This is a summary report on the users survey about building structural design: safety vs economy, which was carried out all over Australia. The survey had generated great interest among the users of Australian Building Codes and Standards with a very successful reply rate of 46%. Australia is now reaching the end of a generation of developing structural codes and standards characterised by the ‘limit state’ design format. It is time to start thinking about the next generation of structural design codes and standards, and laying the principles for their development in the same way that the principles for limit state format codes and standards were laid nearly twenty years ago. What are these principles? The results of the survey have shown that one of the principles could be economic optimisation in structural design. The following question is then: do we need research in this area?