So an update on my digging into the construction quality of the Just-Add-Concrete InstaHospitals:
(For background, I am a structural engineer with around 3 years of professional experience. I am not yet licensed, which means I do much of the same work as a Professional Engineer, but all of my work checked before it’s stamped. I am absolutely still in the phase of my career where I’m building the fundamentals, so there’s a possibility I could be wrong on some of this).
The first noticeable thing is that the entire construction of at least one of these projects has been live-streamed. That makes my job both easier and harder because everything has been documented, but it will take more time to sift through everything to find the relevant information.
It’s interesting to me that the Chinese would make a propaganda effort out of the construction process. This is both with the livestream process itself and the fucking deluge of surface-level articles in English speaking publications that range from obvious CCP puppet media to Western outlets unwittingly (or wittingly) picking up the party line. Even the Wikipedia entries for the hospitals are obvious party propaganda.
I’ve been to job sites, and I’ll admit the scale of the hospital efforts are impressive. There are a few big head scratchers in terms of the engineering but I’ll need more time to process it. Safety seems quite lax, but it’s by no means a haphazard affair in terms of organization.
My theory is that while displaying the supposed strength of the Chinese construction industry to outside powers is a bonus, the main purpose of the highly publicized construction is to reassure the Chinese people. “Look in awe at the miracle of manpower and see how much the party cares”.
Several articles talked about how with SARS, once the temporary hospitals went up, that meant the virus was on the ropes and things were under control. I’m betting that’s a fabricated talking point, and I’m interested to see where else it crops up.
In terms of design issues, there are a few things that stuck out to me immediately:
1) There are two major kinds of structure in use; the prefabricated stacked rectangular dwellings and prefabricated warehouse/hanger open buildings. The former is still dubious to me in terms of its structural capacity while the latter is incredibly common, including in the US.
2) I don’t see any bolted connection between the prefab units and the foundation. At all. It looks like a reinforced slab on grade, with cut sections of wide flange beams just laid on top of it, and the units stacked on top of those:
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It’s possible the beam sections are embedded, but I haven’t found evidence of that so far. And I can’t find anything resembling an anchor rod that’s being tied into the prefabs, even in the poured wall footing around the perimeter. This is such an obvious mistake for light-gage steel construction that I’m going back through every decent photo I can find to see if I missed something. I’ll update it if I’m wrong, but it looks like there’s no way for this structure to transfer lateral loads and overturning loads to the foundation. And that’s even apart from whether or not the units themselves are stout enough to resist extreme lateral loads without folding.
I really hope I’m wrong on this, because if not, then a seismic event or even a particularly bad wind event is going to cause a major fucking problem.
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