SIA-Fast Flow Professional Knowledge Seminar: Urbanisation > Built Environment > Sustainability > Challenges in the design for Rainwater Systems. Are current codes and standards keeping pace with the needs and demands from Architects or are they becoming irrelevant?

It depends on where you are! Decisions of what water to collect, how to collect, where to collect, dictates solutions. However, what is common to all solutions is that the rainwater system must perform and be capable of collecting the rainwater from identified areas and spaces and transporting the rainwater to its designated discharge point safely and without leakage. Many countries are actively collecting the rainwater for re-use and others are temporarily storing the water to reduce overloading infrastructure drainage. Different uses! Different solutions!

What are these solutions? Current global codes and standards are generally relics from the history books and have not kept pace with the effects of urbanization. Industry is driving change despite the shortcomings of the codes and standards. This Seminar aims to provide a different perspective.

Presentation Topics:

– Drainage of ‘Open to Sky’ areas

a) What is ‘open to sky’ drainage?

b) Review of current international codes and practices

c) Insights into the design and use of gravity drainage systems.

d) A brief introduction to the use of Siphonic Systems. A game changer!

– Drainage of ‘Wind-Driven Rain Spaces’

a) What are Wind-Driven Spaces?

b) Absence of codes and standards

c) Review of current practices.

d) What are the Risks for Specifiers?

e) An introduction to an engineered solution

Case Studies: ‘Open to Sky’ areas and ‘Wind-Driven Spaces’

Yap Kern Ling, Director and Co-Founder of Fast Flow Group – Solutions & Applications Management

Kern Ling has 25 years experience in the development of rainwater systems and their use in some of the world’s most iconic buildings. Kern Ling spent 6 years in China in the period leading up to the Beijing Olympic Games. During that period Kern Ling and his Fast Flow colleagues worked with renowned international Architects such as Norman Foster from Foster + Partners on Beijing Terminal 3 (‘the gateway to the Olympics’), Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren from OMA on CCTV HQ Building and Stefan Marbach from Herzog & de Meruron on Beijing National Stadium (‘The Bird’s Nest’) respectively.