Building under construction collapses in George

ArmatageShanks said:
Well we've hardly built any new noteworthy buildings since the New times anyway, just a stadium and something else, which we outsourced.
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this was a small apartment building...

you must be living under a rock, there are thousands of successful developments.
 
Wrath of Khan said:
Surely a building inspector (whatever they're called) needs to sign off and double check things as the building progresses... floor by floor.
They have to check the cement is correct, the mixing ratio, foundations xyz...

The amount of bricks there with no mortar on them seems very odd, someone skimped out on the cement / sand / water ratio. There is not even any brickforce in them!

FML what a disaster, that should be jail time 100%
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Municipalities in my neck of the woods are so far behind and snowed under that they’re telling developers to go ahead and take pics as they go.
 
leon.davibe said:
The nhbrc avg inspection rate was just about 1 per house
Years ago i heard this statistic

I build two homes for myself first one in 2001 2nd 2003 and did not have a single inspection on either

So imagine they arrive to see a floor and then nothing until it is done

Hence everything revolves around engineers signing off structures
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Yeah no NHBRC is a joke.

When I bought my place I got reports/certificates for the foundations, steel work as I have a lot of load bearing beams instead of brick and lintels, etc. Essentially half my house is built from beams, some are exposed and some are bricked and plastered over.

They are also supposed to take a test sample of every load of concrete that gets delivered and records are kept and samples should be tested and signed off.
 
I have never worked on these types of residential projects, but on the large industrial projects I have worked on, you will have a representative from the designers (consultants) who will check the works (clerk of works or resident engineer). Depending on the scale/complexity of the project they would inspect your major concrete pours (like slabs, raft foundations etc).

On even larger projects you will have QA Inspectors and they will inspect every aspect of the project.

So on a residential project, I imagine the designer would have carried out periodical inspections. It is quiet easy to hide something if you are taking short cuts.

I still can't get over the state of those columns. That would be the first thing I would be inspecting after that collapse.
 
Why do they have to take concrete samples?
 
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W@P said:
Yeah no NHBRC is a joke.

When I bought my place I got reports/certificates for the foundations, steel work as I have a lot of load bearing beams instead of brick and lintels, etc. Essentially half my house is built from beams, some are exposed and some are bricked and plastered over.

They are also supposed to take a test sample of every load of concrete that gets delivered and records are kept and samples should be tested and signed off.
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SANS 2001 specifies that you only take concrete samples for every 50m3 poured (3 samples for the 3 testing ages), unless otherwise specified. So they wouldn't need to do that for every truck. But, you can specify that on very small volume pours.
 
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I have said it before on the forum, George municipality is rotten, from the Go George bus initiative, Taxi routes, construction etc, it's just contracts for friends and families.
 
Aghori said:
It's what happened at the collapsed Tongaat Mall according to the owners friends. Shortcuts and cost-saving measures were done,
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and a slack (to put it politely) design engineer. Design defective and very skimpy then still cut back on when built with under strength concrete. Very well connected developer though. One snag on some private construction is that the developer (the Employer) does not want to pay for supervision (and takes every opportunity to beat down the design fees). You can get what you pay for.
 
Supervan II said:
If you ever had a house built for you you'd have an idea of what/when the municipal building inspector is inspecting.

For example: I was not even allowed to cast a foundation for a double garage (separate from main dwelling) until the building inspector inspected the trenches for the foundation. He was back when notified that the floor was cast, etc, etc.

For a multi-storey residential complex it is a thousand times more stringent, or was.
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That's nice you had a good inspector, my personal experience was different which is why I was looking for what is driven by law rather than subjective the experiences.
 
The_Mowgs said:
I have said it before on the forum, George municipality is rotten, from the Go George bus initiative, Taxi routes, construction etc, it's just contracts for friends and families.
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I thought taxis were not allowed in George?
 
I see lots of posts about the "building inspector" but this person is not responsible for the structural integrity of the building during the construction phase. It is the responsibility of the consulting structural engineer to sign off on any structural aspects of the building . This includes inspecting rebar before any concrete is cast as well as approving concrete test results .
 
1st line of fire should be the structural designers, then the structural site supervision engineer.

I am an engineering technologist working on roads and structural projects and we have many hold points on any structural elements being it stormwater inlet structures to each element of bridge construction.

Hold points would include foundation dimensions, correct reinforcing & spacing in the foundation (including starter bars for columns, large concrete pours to check the concrete compaction (or vibration), 28 day concrete strength (this could be bypassed if the 7 day strengths are good enough only to start the reinforcing and formwork of the next element, but no further pours until full strengths are met).

Then this continue for each element going up (ie, columns, decks, etc).

A new regulation is that props, staging and scafolding needs to be designed by a structural engineer, inspected and signed off and deemed safe daily by a competent employee from the contractor.
 
marco79 said:
1st line of fire should be the structural designers, then the structural site supervision engineer.

I am an engineering technologist working on roads and structural projects and we have many hold points on any structural elements being it stormwater inlet structures to each element of bridge construction.

Hold points would include foundation dimensions, correct reinforcing & spacing in the foundation (including starter bars for columns, large concrete pours to check the concrete compaction (or vibration), 28 day concrete strength (this could be bypassed if the 7 day strengths are good enough only to start the reinforcing and formwork of the next element, but no further pours until full strengths are met).

Then this continue for each element going up (ie, columns, decks, etc).

A new regulation is that props, staging and scafolding needs to be designed by a structural engineer, inspected and signed off and deemed safe daily by a competent employee from the contractor.
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I am surprised that the name of the structural engineering company has not yet been mentioned in the media . Right now it seems to be a political issue:(
 
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