Chapter 22 — Further Reading

Temporary structures is one of the few subjects in this book where the primary sources are genuinely better than the secondary ones, because the primary sources are what your specification references and what an investigator will read afterward. Standards are revised — always confirm you have the current edition, and check what edition your contract adopts, because those are not always the same document.

1. ACI 347 — Guide to Formwork for Concrete, American Concrete Institute. The governing document for formwork in most of the United States and the one your specification will name. It addresses design loads including lateral concrete pressure, materials, construction and use, and — the part most people skip — shoring, reshoring, and removal criteria. If you manage concrete work, own a current copy rather than a remembered version. For: project managers, superintendents, and anyone signing a shore release.

2. ACI's formwork design manual, published as Formwork for Concrete (SP-4). The companion working manual to ACI 347: worked design procedures, tables, and examples for form and shore design. This is the book a formwork engineer actually opens, and reading a few of its worked examples will permanently change how you look at a wall form. For: readers who want to understand the calculation their specialty engineer is doing, not just the result.

3. ACI 318 — Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete. Governs the permanent structure, and matters here because the acceptance criteria and strength provisions behind your stripping criterion trace back to it. For: readers who want to know where "75 percent of f'c" comes from.

4. OSHA's construction standards, 29 CFR Part 1926 — Subparts P (Excavations), L (Scaffolds), Q (Concrete and Masonry Construction), R (Steel Erection), and M (Fall Protection). Read the actual regulatory text, not a summary. Subpart P is short, plain, and the most consequential thirty minutes of reading in this chapter. Subpart L is where the scaffold numbers in §22.4 come from. Subpart Q contains the formwork, shoring, reshoring, and masonry limited-access-zone provisions. For: everyone. Managers who have read the actual standards make different decisions than managers who have read slide decks about them.

5. OSHA's published guidance and training materials on scaffolding and on trenching and excavation. The agency issues plain-language guidance documents, interactive tools, and campaign materials aimed at contractors and workers, including material specifically on competent-person duties. They are free, they are accurate, and they are written for the field rather than for lawyers. Confirm the current versions on the agency's site. For: safety orientation, toolbox talks, and training your own competent persons.

6. ASCE/SEI 37 — Design Loads on Structures During Construction, American Society of Civil Engineers. The standard that addresses loads on partially completed structures and on the temporary works that support them — construction loads, construction-period wind, and the load combinations that apply while a building cannot yet resist what it will resist when finished. This is the engineering basis for much of §22.7. Read it alongside ASCE 7 for the wind provisions it draws on. For: readers moving toward a technical or engineering role, and any CM who negotiates with erection engineers.

7. The masonry industry's standard practice for bracing masonry walls under construction, published through the Mason Contractors Association of America and its wall-bracing council. This is the document behind the restricted-zone and design-wind-speed approach in §22.7. Ungrouted masonry walls in a wind event are a recurring cause of multiple-fatality collapses, and this practice is the industry's engineered answer. If you build masonry, require the bracing plan as a submittal and require it to reference this practice. For: superintendents and project managers on any job with tall CMU.

8. AISC's Code of Standard Practice for Steel Buildings and Bridges, American Institute of Steel Construction. Defines the division of responsibility in steel erection, including temporary support, bracing, and what the erector is and is not responsible for. It is a contract document on most steel jobs whether or not anybody on your team has read it. Pair it with OSHA Subpart R. For: anyone writing or administering a structural steel subcontract.

9. The Scaffold and Access Industry Association (SAIA). The trade association for scaffold, shoring, and suspended-access equipment. It publishes codes of safe practice by scaffold type and runs competent-person and qualified-person training. When you need to train and document a competent person rather than simply designate one, this is a place to start. For: safety directors and subcontractor prequalification.

10. The Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) and the Association of Drilled Shaft Contractors, on excavation support, anchors, and groundwater control. Technical guidance and practice publications on soldier pile and lagging, sheet piling, tiebacks, secant walls, and construction dewatering, produced by the specialty contractors and engineers who actually do this work. Useful when you need to evaluate a specialty subcontractor's proposal and do not want to evaluate it on price alone. For: project managers on deep excavations and urban sites.

11. NIOSH — the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. NIOSH publishes research, hazard alerts, and fatality investigation summaries on construction hazards, including trenching collapses and carbon monoxide exposure from fuel-burning equipment in enclosed spaces. The fatality investigation write-ups are hard reading and extremely effective as toolbox-talk material, because they describe the ordinary decisions that preceded the event. For: safety training that needs to land rather than comply.

12. Your own project specification, the manufacturer's technical data, and the sealed submittal. This is not a joke entry. For any temporary structure on your job, the three documents that actually govern are the specification section that assigns the design responsibility, the manufacturer's load tables and erection instructions for the system you bought, and the specialty engineer's sealed drawing. Most of the failures in this chapter happened on jobs where all three existed and nobody on the management team had read any of them. Start there, this week, before you buy another book. For: you, today.

A note on currency and jurisdiction. Standards are revised on cycles of several years, and the requirements for excavations, scaffolds, delegated design, dewatering discharge, and licensure vary substantially between U.S. jurisdictions and even more so internationally. Nothing in this chapter is a substitute for the edition your contract adopts and the rules your jurisdiction enforces. When the two disagree, that is a question for your project attorney and your engineer of record — and it is a question worth asking before you build, not after.