There are a lot of reasons why building standards are necessary. They make construction sites safer by providing clear guidelines, while also allowing contractors and architects to know exactly what products they require to bring a blueprint to life. With such obvious benefits, it's pretty surprising that Australia hasn't had a set of standards for concrete anchoring systems.
This lack of any standards has presented a few challenges and problems. Everybody who has needed to work with anchors has been reliant on information from suppliers, which hasn't always been transparent or easy to compare with alternatives. When dealing with factors such as load capacity, all the information needs to be as clear and concise as possible. With this in mind, it's hugely exciting that 2016 has seen the introduction of a concrete anchor standard (known as SA TS 101:2015 Design of post-installed and cast-in fastenings for use in concrete) into the National Construction Code (NCC).
In this article, we'll take a closer look at how this came to be, and what sort of impact it will have.