The rolled steel joists or RSJ’s as there are sometimes referred to look like the letter H if you look at a cross section of the steel. The two flanges of the vertical steel column are thicker and wider than the flanges of a horizontal beam, to enable the RSJ to withstand the compressive stresses that the structure will put on it. Steel beams and columns are connected using threaded bolts and nuts.

The steel frame needs to be protected from fire as steel softens at high temperatures and this could cause the building to collapse. Steel columns can be protected by encasing it in some form of fire resistant material such as masonry, concrete, plasterboard, or paint.

The exterior shell or skin of a building can be attached to the steel frame using a variety of construction techniques and a variety of architectural styles. Bricks, stone, precast concrete, architectural glass, sheet metal, fibre cement boards, box profile sheeting, or paint can been used to cover the frame to protect the steel from the elements.

Several teams from participating nations are complaining about the condition of the accommodation in the athletes’ village with some team members refusing to attend due to the poor conditions and potential security fears.

The construction for the games has been plagued with problems and the preparations have also been affected by failures in the construction of venues and structures. Last week a bridge at the Jawaharlal Nehru complex, which is the centrepiece for the Games collapsed, resulting in more than 20 people being injured. A section of the ceiling in the weightlifting arena also fell down later in the week.

Despite repeated requests from the CGF’s coordination commission earlier in the year to step up the construction, it was clear that there was still a huge amount of work to be done to complete the construction projects. The CGF’s coordination commission stated in its press release following a visit in May, that a main concern and the major issue was the readiness of the buildings especially in the Games village.

Members of the England camp will spend their first night in the Games village tonight. A group of approximately 20 support staff will stay in the accommodation to ensure conditions are suitable for athletes. All of the England team are scheduled to be in the accommodation by next Tuesday.

A concrete retaining wall could be as straight forward as using wooden railway sleepers to create raised flower beds in a garden, which will retaining a small earth load. At the other end of the scale you could have a precast concrete crib wall retaining an earth bank on a motorway cutting, either way the most important thing is selecting the correct product for the application for which it will be used.

The most common material for constructing a retaining wall is concrete, this can either be constructed onsite or ‘insitu’ using shuttering and is reinforced using steel bars and mesh, or it can be precast in a specialist precast concrete factory. The finished sections would then be delivered to site where they would be fixed to create a retaining wall.