INGENIEUR
engaged. Since incidences of such nature affect
mainly complexes or big buildings, owners and
the managing team should be educated on this
risk as part of their work manual.
Periodical Inspection Stage
a) Failure to perform periodical inspection of a
building by the owner
Buildings deteriorate over the span of their life
time. Corrosion affects reinforcements due to
carbonation or concrete cracking and reduces the
structural capacity of the building as it ages. On
top of this, incremental overloading of the building
due to change of use on certain floors can have a
detrimental effect on the building’s integrity. Such
incremental threats need to be identified and
remedied. Section 85A of the Street, Drainage
and Building Act 1974 provides for mandatory
inspections of buildings more than five storeys
every ten years. However, the Act requires the
Local Authority to issue a notice to owners of
these buildings and most of them hardly do so.
Owners take advantage of this and consequently,
very few building owners perform such a task as
it is perceived as an additional financial burden.
Should another building collapse due to same
cause as mentioned above, fingers will again be
pointing at stakeholders.
This is a common practice where the demolition
of structures, especially low rise, contractors and
workers pay little attention to the safety aspects of
workers and the public. Structural components are
demolished based on operational convenience.
In the recent case of the collapse of some Ipoh
shophouses during demolition killing two passers-
by in 2009, the demolition sequence was wrongly
performed. The contractor started demolishing
the shophouses from the back leaving the front of
the shops which faced the street unprotected. As
demolition reached the front, the cantilever action
of the cantilevered balconies of the buildings
together with some stacked tiles suddenly tilted
the shell of the buildings towards the street and it
fell on three passing cars killing two people.
b) Demolition contractors submitting standard
method statements without understanding the
structural behaviour of structure
Contractors demolishing buildings have been
using the same standard method statement
to satisfy the Local Authority and DOSH as the
rule requires them to submit such a document
before commencing demolition work. Contractors
may not follow what is stated in the method
statement.
In 2009 alone, there were two building
demolition sites where a sudden building collapse
caused fatalities.
Recommendation
Recommendation
a) Governments, especially State Governments
should issue instructions to all Local Authorities
to ensure notices are sent to all building owners
to observe this rule. Alternatively, Act 133
can be amended to make it mandatory for
the owners of buildings to perform periodical
inspection by PEs according to the guidelines
drawn up by the Ministry of Housing and
Local Government. (Guidelines on Periodical
Inspection of Building issued by Ministry of
Housing & Local Government 1996).
Demolition Stage
a) Demolition done by contractors without
understanding the structural behaviour of a
building’s structure
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a) Method statement must be signed by a PE
which is then submitted to DOSH and he must
undertake the supervision of the demolition of
critical parts of the structure.
Analysis of Stakeholders’ Exposure to
Causes of Building Failure and their
Frequency
It would appear that contractors have the highest
number of exposures to causes of building failure
that occur along the supply chain with 16 (67%)
followed by Engineers with 10 (42%) based on 24
identified possible causes. (Some causes may
have more than one stakeholder). See Table 1 and
Chart 1.