Minimising disaster impact with digital solutions

KUCHING: The tragic earthquake of 2015 – and another one just this past March – makes it increasingly relevant to the construction industry in East Malaysia to include seismic considerations when it comes to construction.

According to Trimble Solutions SouthEast Asia’s area director Thomas Phang, technology is enabling the industry to alleviate these fears by effectively and efficiently incorporating safety considerations into the construction of buildings.

“It is heart-breaking whenever lives are lost during disasters – be it natural or man-made. But we have come a long way – humankind’s advancements, especially in the area of technology, has given us the capability to minimise or mitigate loss when tragedy happens.

“Take the tsunami risks to Malaysia during the Indian Ocean earthquake of 2004, or the more recent 2015 earthquake in East Malaysia; many Malaysians would never have thought a largely seismically stable country like ours would ever be in danger from these natural disasters.

“The situation today is very different – serious thought is being given to ensuring buildings and structures are strong enough to withstand certain levels of damage and impact,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Borneo Post.

Efforts are being made towards this. Malaysia is implementing the Malaysia National Annex to Eurocode 8, a eurocode series of European standards (EN) related to construction — based on research done on local earthquakes and also long-distance earthquakes, such as that from Sumatra.

Meanwhile, Phang said Trimble had design codes such as for wind and seismic loads, written to address disaster safety in the region.

“Our Tekla solutions are written with the relevant design codes and safety factors taken into consideration. One feature of our software – Tekla Structural Designer (TSD) – that is very useful for engineers are the templates which are provided with the design code in mind.

“For engineers, this allows them to focus on what matters – more time on rationalising the design and less mistakes made, rather than spending time referencing the design code documents and number crunching.”

Trimble Buildings, a part of Trimble’s Engineering and Construction segment, is focused on solutions that optimize the complete Design-Build-Operate (DBO) lifecycle of buildings.

Tekla is its brand portfolio of software for construction, structural and civil engineering which builds on the free flow of information, constructible models and collaboration. This includes software such as Tekla Structures, Tekla Structural Designer, Trimble Connect and many others.

“One good example is the 18-storey mall/hotel we present as a case study at the BIM Innovation Conference held in Sabah. The building is designed to withstand seismic and wind factors – all done using our Tekla software,” he said.

This comes as East Malaysia has very rarely had seismic activity of devastating consequences – the last major occurrence back in 1976 before the recent quakes of 2015 and 2018.

When the quake of 2015 happened off Sabah, Trimble started working very closely with the Institute of Engineers Malaysia (IEM) who were researching and developing the Malaysian National Annex.

“We went as far as to work a draft version into our 2016 version even though it was not yet officially published. We eventually made the adjustments to the final draft based on the currently published codes.

“Especially in Sabah – we have seen that engineers and contractors are very concerned about achieving a safe design to withstand seismic forces, and also keen learning and rationalising the design codes.

“At the same time however, they want to avoid affecting the cost of construction too much so that property prices remain stable. At the end of the day, it’s all about putting safety first – taking extra steps to consider these seismic effects to make sure buildings are safe for the public.