UK construction companies are accused of having a poor understanding of Eurocodes by international construction consultancy McBains Cooper.
It claims that the pan-European model building codes developed by the European Committee for Standardisation should have been fully adopted in the UK from April 2, 2010, when British Standard codes for construction stopped being updated.
'This is a potentially massive issue: our research indicates that the vast majority of construction industry professionals are blissfully unaware that Eurocodes are here... and that they have been designing and specifying buildings to outdated British Standards since updates stopped,' said Paul Cowton of property and construction consultancy McBains Cooper.
He added: 'It's a ticking time bomb, and sooner or later there's going to be a slip up resulting in litigation at the very least. British Standards for building will be withdrawn completely in 2013, and simply aren't being updated. But so far as we can see, the vast majority of professionals in building design simply don't know about Eurocodes, but the front-line engineers do.'
He alleged that confusion reigns in the contruction sector, and added: 'If something goes wrong, there is huge potential for litigation, because they're not designing to current best standards or using current best practice. There is a strong potential for legal action under Duty of Care.
'This is about professionalism in the construction sector, and, frankly, it is falling apart when it comes to Eurocodes. But it is a tediously important piece of legislation.'