Durban - The doomed Tongaat Mall was being designed while it was being built and architectural changes were still coming through two months before it collapsed.
Sometimes, the changes being called for were of “such magnitude”’ that it was difficult to have the right designs all the time, consulting engineer, Andre Ballack, managing director of his company, Axion Consulting, told the latest session of the Department of Labour-run commission of inquiry into the collapse.
Two people were killed and 29 injured when a portion of the partially-built mall collapsed in November last year. The mall, now under the control of the Department of Labour, was being constructed by Gralio Precast, and developed by Rectangle Property Investment.
Jay Singh is the chief executive of Gralio, while his son, Ravi Jagadasan, was the sole director of Rectangle (he is no longer a director).
Often, when Ballack was told about changes that had to be made, the slabs had already been cast and areas had been built, he testified.
He was still receiving “substantial” changes two months before the collapse and on some occasions, he received two and three revisions a day.
He agreed with his company’s lawyer, Richard Hoal, that each time he received a new revision “it was back to the drawing board” to do an almost complete redesign.
“At the end of the day, you simply had to provide information for the contractor to continue working, at the same time trying to redesign stuff that was already built, and redesigning stuff not yet built.”
He said he told the developer, Singh, at the time that (because of all the changes) he would eventually have to return to do remedial work.
Ballack told how he had worked on 68 shopping centres as well as schools, hospitals, sports stadiums, roads, townships, industrial projects, bridges, reservoirs, office parks and the Mossgas oil rig.
He had not been appointed to undertake the monitoring of the construction at the Tongaat Mall, however, and understood that Singh was at the site every day, he said.
Ballack said the only thing agreed by all the parties was that the trigger for the collapse was what had been identified as beam 7, column 319 or column 243.
Beam 7 should have had 19 reinforcing bars, but only six had been cast into the beam. This was an error in construction, he said. As a result of the insufficient reinforcing, the beam was 159 percent overstressed at the time of the collapse.
At the time of the collapse, the beam should have been able to withstand a load of 2 755 kN (kilonewtons), but could only withstand 1 518 kN. A further concern was the incorrect placing of bars in another beam. The most likely scenario was that beam 7 failed, causing the two columns to collapse.
It was also possible that column 319 failed due to under-strength concrete, the hearing was told.
Meanwhile, a contempt of court case for allegedly ignoring a high court order to stop construction, brought by the eThekwini Municipality against Jagadasan and Rectangle Property Investments, was expected to resume in the Durban High Court today. The construction had gone ahead without plans being approved, the city had said.
Jagadasan told a previous hearing that the city’s contempt of court application should be dismissed because he never received the papers to stop work.
Daily News