Worldwide, there has been a greater and greater focus on the design life of new structures. This is due to a greater concern with environmental impacts and previous poor performance of some structures. Traditional design codes, with their primary focus on life safety, either do not address durability, or provide a generic, one-size approach that either does not consider the environment of the structure, or only in the most basic
manner. There has been a recent effort to consider durability, with Owners demanding consideration of long-term performance so that their structure meet a specified design service life. In order to support this objective, ACI Committee 365 – Service Life Prediction, has developed a Design Specification for Performing a Service Life Evaluation. This document outlines a process for the Service Life Engineer to follow for a minimum
standard of service life evaluation. The Owner can adopt this as a requirement for the design professional on their projects. This presentation discusses the motivation for developing this design presentation, its history of development, an outline of the design specification and discussion of how it can be used as part of the design and construction process.