zlacker

>>hrl+(OP)
This should be an economics piece, not an environmental piece. The author states that "one of iron’s unalterable properties is that it rusts" yet further on acknowledges the existence of stainless steel.

There's nothing wrong with reinforced concrete, but the incentives to produce long lasting buildings are not there. The cheapest bidder will generally win and their building will last the "design life" of the building, but often not much more. The simplest way to change this is to extend the design life, which would result in stainless steels or another more expensive material being used in this application.

>>brutus+J5
> The cheapest bidder will generally win and their building will last the "design life" of the building, but often not much more. The simplest way to change this is to extend the design life, which would result in stainless steels or another more expensive material being used in this application.

Just FYI, on a ‘plan and spec’ construction project, all material is specified by the architect and engineers. If the project specs say you have to use stainless steel rebar, then even the low bidder will have it included.

>>quickt+lf
I'm not in traditional engineering but I always felt like "specs" only tell part of the story. In your example they may use stainless steel but cut corners by using less of it than they really should or maybe just use really cheap stainless steel which leads to other problems.

I've noticed manufacturing companies like big auto will try to solve for this by creating more specs for parts provided by suppliers but that's a losing battle as its always a race to the bottom. Plus now you need large testing teams to verify parts meet all these different specs. Maybe some percentage of the parts do - what do you in that case? The whole process can be a mess.

>>mdgrec+ul
Most manufacturing specs in US industries such as aerospace and defense are extremely well defined. They don't usually leave enough meat to cut corners in significant areas. They are typically fairly robust in that they are self-assuring. When specs are written correctly they are extremely difficult to subvert in one area and still come up with anything that could be confused with a conforming product. Plus the penalties for actively subverting these specs can be quite severe.

That said, I can almost guarantee the specs for automotive manufacturers are less strict and the penalties less severe simply because the specs are made to be cost-centric rather than performance-centric.