Chile’s steel institute (ICHA) said compliance of local steel norms are key to guaranteeing steel quality and the people’s safety.
Commenting on anomalies at some of the nation’s infrastructure projects that used steel, Juan Carlos Gutierrez, executive director at ICHA, mentioned as an example the Cau Cau bridge located in the southern city of Valdivia, which is expected to be partially demolished before it can start being used.
According to Gutierrez, those failures have produced some “natural disturbance” in the local population.
“First, we should ask if these cases have to do with specific causes in some of these specific areas or if they represent a generalized trend in civil construction,” the executive noted.
ICHA said it has suggested fundamental proposals to develop and support global policies that could boost the study and research of norms and regulation of projects in local civil construction.
Late in May, ICHA noted imported rebar didn’t comply with the country’s steel norms. Anomalies included lack of tags in Spanish, lack of test reports in those steel products, despite their proper certificates, and wrong categorization of the steel following chemical analysis.
At the time of ICHA’s evaluation, Gerdau said Chinese rebar couldn’t be used in either buildings or construction in general for being low alloy rebar.