Setting monitoring thresholds that don't cry wolf

Every monitoring plan needs threshold values, and the temptation is to set them conservatively and move on. In practice that produces a project where the alarm goes off weekly, the site supervisor stops reading the emails, and the one reading that mattered gets lost in the noise.

We start from the structure, not the instrument. What is the adjacent building made of, what condition is it already in, and what movement would actually indicate distress rather than thermal cycling or traffic? A century-old unreinforced masonry party wall and a modern steel frame do not deserve the same numbers.

Then we define who gets told what. A threshold exceedance that requires the engineer of record to make a call should not go to the same inbox as a routine daily summary. Role-based notification paths mean the right person sees the right reading at the right time — and everyone else stays out of it.

The result is a plan where an alert means something. That is worth more than a plan that is technically conservative and practically ignored.