5. Phase 3: Kick-off with lead engineer (Technical Kick-off)

After identifying the critical elements per failure mechanism and putting forth expectation with regards to their compliance, the engineer needs to set up a meeting with the lead engineer to discuss her/his decisions. This meeting is referred to as the ‘Technical kick-off’ and it should cover the following topics:

  • Structural setup of the building ( with a filled in Appendix C3)

  • Assumptions regarding the structural setup of the building

  • The appropriateness of the selected critical elements per failure mechanism (with respective tables in Appendix C1 )

  • The expected behaviour of the critical elements (will they comply or not? And why?)

  • Impact of expectancies on the response of the building to see if they are critical

Before the kick-off, the structural engineer can already look for possible reference objects and building elements which could help in the assessment of the critical elements. In order to look for the reference objects and the building elements, the engineer can use the tools mentioned in section 6 .

After the kick-off, the lead engineer and the structural engineer will have reached an agreement on which elements are critical and whether they are expected to comply.

For the kick-off, it is not necessary to prepare a PowerPoint presentation. Instead, the appendix showing the structural set up of the building (Appendix C3 according to the Vraagspecificatie v2022 [NCG-VSP-R2022], please check the appropriate appendix according to the current template) can be used for the kick-off meeting. Thus, this appendix needs to be complete before the technical kick-off meeting.

Validation is described in the next page: ‘Phase 4’.