Performance-Based Engineering of Constructed Systems

During the 1999 SEI/ASCE Structures Congress, the Executive Committee of the Technical Activities Division of the Structural Engineering Institute approved a new technical committee for defining the “performance of a civil engineering facility.” The new committee’s purpose is as follows: “facilitating the development and adoption of realistic, effective, comprehensive and reliable performance-based design and evaluation techniques and procedures for civil engineering facilities, and helping to establish the foundations for specifications, model codes and commentaries for performance-based design and evaluation” ASCE 2000 . The Committee met four times from 2000 to 2003 and organized two technical sessions at the 2003 Structures Congress at Seattle. Its membership comprised approximately 30 individuals— representing academe, government and the consulting industry, and included individuals who are not engineers. The committee recognized that formulating and articulating a clear, comprehensive, and consistent consensus definition for the performance of a civil engineered facility is an important step and in fact a prerequisite for serving as an intellectual foundation before making any transition to a performance-based approach in civil engineering. This paper offers a synthesis of specification-based versus performance-based civil engineering and articulates the committee’s conclusions in framing and articulating the following questions: What is performance-based civil engineering? How can we objectively define performance? What are the issues that should be recognized along the way to performance-based engineering and their possible resolutions? While this report was being completed and circulated within the committee and Performance of Structures TAC members, steps were taken to merge the Performance-Based Design and Evaluation of Civil Engineering Facilities Committee with the Performance of Full-Scale Structures Committee. This merger took place during the 2004 Congress, and a critical mass of committee members from professional practice and academe continue