Structural Engineering Editing and Proofreading Services

The finished structure is stable. That is what the calculations demonstrate, and it is true from the day the last connection is made until the building comes down. The dangerous period is everything before that: a frame that is stable only when the floor slabs are cast, a wall that relies on a return that has not been built, a beam that is fine once its neighbour is in place and is not fine on Tuesday afternoon. Structural collapses during construction are rarely design failures. They are sequence failures, and the sequence is a document.

We edit what structural engineers produce — temporary works design briefs and design certificates, erection sequence and stability documentation, propping and falsework specifications, demolition and structural alteration methodologies, design statements and structural design certificates, load path and stability narratives, connection design and interface documentation, existing structure appraisals and capacity assessments, monitoring specifications for adjacent structures, technical queries and site instruction documentation, residual risk information for contractors, and inspection and hold point documentation for structural work. Our editors work on the document that describes the building before it is finished.

The erection sequence and stability statement is where structural safety during construction is either written down or assumed, and its failure is silence about the intermediate condition. A design that is complete and correct tells a contractor what to build; it does not tell them the order in which the structure becomes able to stand up. We write these so each stage states what provides stability at that moment, naming the element or the temporary support rather than describing the structure generally, since "the frame is stable once braced" leaves the contractor to decide when that is; so the elements that must be in place before others are loaded are listed as conditions rather than as a preferred order, because an order can be varied on site by anyone under programme pressure and a condition invites a call; so temporary works assumed in the permanent design are named explicitly, given that the commonest gap in the industry is a designer assuming propping and a contractor assuming the design covers it; so anything the contractor may not change without the engineer is stated in the same place as the sequence rather than in a covering letter; so the loads the partly built structure can and cannot take are given, including construction plant, stacked materials and wind on an unclad frame; and so the residual risks reach the drawing rather than living in a register. Sequences written this way get followed.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including designs, calculations and project information. We are editors rather than structural engineers, and we offer no view on design, stability or construction methods. What we can do is make the intermediate condition as clearly described as the finished one.