Author Description

Rapid urban development in recent decades has seen cities are now increasingly more populated, as witnessed by the rise of megacities across the world. These trends pose critical challenges to managing infrastructure in a densely build-up urban environment. The constraints of limited land in mega cities have forced buildings to be built higher. Planners and architects have faced the challenge of designing taller buildings and long span bridges with the optimum use of steel and concrete materials to achieve speed and economy. A good balance is sought to improve buildability, quality, and labour productivity and to reduce construction time, material usage and wastage. Steel concrete composite construction, which encourages the use of prefabrication and precast components, coupling with advancement in fabrication and material technology, has accelerated the adoption of a number of innovations which lead to an overall improvement of productivity in construction. New construction technologies are also emerging together with new products, such as high strength steel, composite steel, weather resistant and fire resistant steel which are suitable for use in the tropical and urban environment. The move to green and sustainable design to accommodate large span column free space and the intensive service requirements of the building tenant has brought in new design challenges. Steel concrete composite systems are increasingly being employed to produce innovative and spectacular architectural designs with complex geometrical problems. This is made possible with the advancement in design expertise, metallurgy research, fabrication technology and construction technique, and more importantly, the close cooperation and commitment of architects, engineers, suppliers, fabricators and erectors, sharing knowledge through building information model and working as a team to ensure successful transformation of an innovative design to a successful completed project of architectural and