Lateral bracing was a topic of discussion during last month's Region VIII meeting. Tom Coghill, Building Safety & Permits Directors for James City County, Va., provided some examples of what can go wrong when the bracing is not correctly installed, as his jurisdiction found out with a truss system that was built in 2007. Explained Coghill:



"This is a 60-foot span piggy-back truss system built in 2007. The top cords of the lower trusses buckled out-of-plane (as much as 18 inches in some places) because no diagonal bracing was installed in that plane (or on any of the other required planes). Everyone, including the general contractor, framing sub, SER, special inspector and our inspector missed this crucial bracing. You should also be able to see that the framer used 8d nails to attach the perpendicular bracing and most of those nails pulled out. The forensic engineers told us we were very lucky that the roof had not already collapsed."