Defects of new and old facades – lessons learnt

For building projects planning procedures have been developed and successfully applied for many years. Starting from various planning phases such as preliminary design, final design, planning permission application and execution planning a final step is the review of the static calculation by a checking engineer in Germany. For lifetime of structures after completion, instruments for monitoring of the structures exist, e.g. VDI guideline 6200. It gives orientation values for periodic inspections intervals. The VDI guideline 6200 is also applicable to facades – including parts of the structure, which are difficult to access. With increasing requirements also facade constructions are becoming more and more complex in planning as well as execution. The question arises to what extent inspection processes have to be adapted for facades. Experience from expert reports shows extremely different quality in planning and execution. Facades are still underestimated by those involved, even though they often require comparatively enormous planning effort: examples include sophisticated Finite Element calculations or tests in laboratory, special approvals and way of construction closer to mechanical engineering than classic building workmanship.