Performance-based engineering of constructed systems

The Technical Activities Division of the Structural Engineering Institute approved a new technical committee , which provided a synthesis of specification-based versus performance-based civil engineering and conclusions in framing and articulating the questions regarding civil engineering and its objectives. The Far East and North America are now being planned and developed with such innovative contract-delivery mechanisms as design-build-warrant and design-build-operate, which approaches to planning and delivering constructed systems and serve as drivers toward performance-based approaches in civil engineering practice. Performance-based design depends on many interconnected and interdependent issues, including classification of constructed systems, definition of performance, tools for measuring performance, quantitative indexes that may serve as assurance of performance, and how to describe and measure performance under various levels and classes of uncertainty.