Earthquake-ready buildings enhance tenant safety

Amid various earthquake related news, the main thing that’s on every building tenant’s mind right now is the question: “How safe is our building when a strong earthquake hits?”

Many high-rise commercial and residential buildings continue to rise in highly urbanized metropolitan centers. This is a natural course for a country’s infrastructure development. However, amid the scare of a “big one” hitting Metro Manila, there now exists a need for property developers to ensure their buildings’ earthquake resilience and to communicate this to their stakeholders, particularly current and future tenants.

According to Eric Manuel, VP for business development of Daiichi Properties, “It is critical for developers to implement an effective way of evaluating their projects in terms of disaster resilience at the start of the design and construction process.”

Manuel said that their own seismic testing methods, in collaboration with leading structural engineering firms, are performance-based, which are more effective in determining a project’s ability to withstand seismic activity and strong winds.

“We tested the structural integrity of our upcoming buildings through a performance-based design approach using a computer model that measures optimal efficiency. This means that the shape and design of our buildings are also dependent on the results of the performance-based testing. More important than the aesthetics of our buildings are the safety of our tenants,” he added.

Daiichi’s award-winning 32-story One World Place in Bonifacio Global City has already achieved abovestandard structural performance and reliability, engaging AIT Consulting to implement this performance-based evaluation, with special emphasis on the effects of earthquakes and wind.

Similarly, the company’s World Plaza, which won the Asia Pacific Award for best office development in the Philippines for 2015, has also achieved above-standard structural performance and reliability in performance-based seismic and wind evaluations.

“Through the application of sophisticated analytical methods, Daiichi’s partner structural engineers are able to more reliably and directly predict building response during a maximum ground-shaking event. Our buildings’ designs are then tuned and optimized to respond in the most efficient way possible,” emphasized