Nepali Engineer - Civil Engineering

This podcast is about the options for the Nepali people who want to construct in short term. I discuss on the currently available house designs for the short and long-term residence. As the Nepal Government is working in the revision of the Building Code of Nepal, I suggest waiting for the code to release before any permanent structure is constructed. There are various suggestion including soil test, minimum width of access road and other technical requirements. (more…)

After the devastating earthquake of April 25, 2015 a new level of concern has been surfaced among the home buyers and home renters. That is because, most of the piller-system houses that collapsed to ruins were either constructed to sell or to rent. The reason of such collapse can be listed as: Use of low grade construction materials Ignoring basic engineering principles Construction without permit It is no secret that the government regulating bodies are not as efficient as required. There are various loop-holes in construction practice. Almost everybody agrees that it would take more than just a little bit of effort to plug such loopholes. Change in system takes time and we don’t have the luxury of time. Let’s see what we can do to be safe in a rented house or apartment? How we won’t be cheated in buying a sub-standard house? (more…)

The rebuilding process after a devastating earthquake is a tricky business. People are scared and impatient, many engineers are clueless. There are also some people who want to benefit from the situation. I am dealing only with the engineering aspect of the rebuilding process. This podcast is prepared after reading an article by a professor in a popular online media, setopati.com. Prof. Padma Khadka has written an article titled ‘Don’t worry if you have cracks on beams and columns’. I believe, people should worry and hence this podcast. Prof. Khadka is a geotechnical engineer. But, his suggestions are nowhere near geotechnical in nature. Please listen to the podcast and comment. (more…)

In the second podcast of NepaliEngineer we discuss the possibility of seismic microzonation. The question was to prepare a map so that a person can know the seismicity of the place while purchasing or building a structure. We discuss the possibility of having such a map by the government. In the course of the preparation for the podcast, I had collected various hazard maps and concluded: although the hazard maps are good for research purpose, they don’t serve as a guideline when making land purchases for residential purpose. there is no consistency between different hazard maps prepared by different authorities (see the papers below). these maps can not be reliable during earthquake. In the podcast, I discuss about the difficulty in producing a reliable earthquake hazard map useful for land use management. Some other documentations I found in a quick search include: Preliminary Study For Evaluation Of Earthquake Risk To The Historical Structures In Kathmandu Valley (Nepal); by Sudhir R. Shrestha, Madan B. Karkee, Carlos H. Cuadra, Juan C. Tokeshi, and S. N. Miller; at World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, August 1-6, 2004 (download link, pdf) (more…)

In association with kguff.com, we are starting a new podcast of NepaliEngineer.com. The technical aspects of the podcast is being managed by kguff and the technical aspects of the content by NepaliEngineer.com The first podcast is about the Code of Conduct of Nepal Engineering Council (NEC). All the related documents of NEC can be downloaded here. (more…)