Structural screening · Building control

Find potential errors in structural submissions before you review them

Upload a calculation package. Spanwise reads it the way a checking engineer would, redoes the arithmetic rather than taking it on trust, and raises what looks worth a closer look.

Arrange access for your team What it looks for

✓Arithmetic redone independently, not taken on trust

✓Works to the code the engineer used, Eurocodes or the older British Standards

✓Advisory only, every determination stays with your officer

Critical issues found

1 critical · 5 advisory

✗

Please revise the rafter design and detail a compliant final arrangement. The only calculated proposed arrangement, 47 x 120 C16 rafters at 200 mm centres, has a short-term deflection of 9.693 mm against the stated 8.806 mm limit; the note to provide additional 47 x 120 rafters does not resolve that failed calculation.

Rafter deflection exceeds limit

Please provide web bearing and web buckling checks, or specify and check stiffeners where required, at the concentrated support/load points of B1, B2, R1, the R2 lintel and S1/S2. The steel outputs expressly omit these checks despite the stated reactions and point-load connections.

Steel web local checks omitted

Please complete the local and overall stability checks for the notched B1-to-B2 connection, and issue the final connection detail if this connection is required. The calculation records the 4.50 kN factored shear but leaves checks 6 and 7 as not checked.

Notched connection stability unchecked

Example flags, worded as they reach the submitting engineer.

How it works

Upload the submission

Drop in the calculation package as it arrived: PDF, Word document, or a scan of hand calculations. Handwritten sheets and sketches are read as images, not just as text.

Spanwise screens it

It works through the package the way a checking engineer would, redoing the arithmetic itself and looking at the pages that matter. Large packages can take ten minutes or more, and the report is emailed either way.

Review the flags

You get a clear outcome (no critical issues, advisory issues found, or critical issues found) with each concern worded as a query you can put straight to the engineer. A PDF report is emailed for the file.

Scope

What it looks for

Spanwise is not working through a fixed checklist. It reads the package, works out what is in it, and looks at it the way a checking engineer would. These are the things it commonly raises.

Steel beams & columns

Bending, shear, deflection, lateral torsional buckling, section classification, web bearing, bearing length, steel grade mismatch

EC3BS 5950UK NA

Timber joists & rafters

Bending, shear, deflection with kdef creep factor, bearing length, service class, load duration class, notch capacity

EC5BS 5268

Masonry walls

Slenderness ratio against EC6 §5.5.1.4 limit of 27, compressive stress, partial material factor γM, beam end bearing stress

EC6BS 5628

Strip & pad foundations

Founding depth in clay, bearing pressure utilisation, tree proximity assessment, wide strip reinforcement, ground investigation

EC7NHBC 4.2

Reinforced concrete

Concrete grade and cover, reinforcement specification, bending, shear and deflection checks

EC2BS 8110

The arithmetic itself

Bending moments, load additions, section capacities, deflections and bearing pressures redone independently rather than read off the page, so a stated conclusion that does not follow from the numbers gets raised

Loading compliance

ULS load combinations, snow loading, partition allowances, wind load derivation, imposed load categories, self-weight inclusion

EC0EC1AD A

Multi-element packages

Named elements read from the package as written, and a reaction that one member hands to another followed through so the two can be compared

Handwritten and scanned

Photographed or scanned hand calculations are looked at as images as well as read as text, because extracted text drops sketches and misreads handwritten digits

Get in touch

If you work in building control and want to find out more about Spanwise, or arrange access for your team, send us a message and we'll get back to you.

✓hello@spanwise.co.uk

✓Pilot programmes available for council building control teams

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