Today, the NZ Herald reported:
Unfortunately it's not only in Nelson where people are turning a blind eye to badly designed and constructed buildings. New Zealand has a major problem of unenforced building codes whereby councils, designers and construction companies are all in cahoots to build as cheaply and as fast as possible. The end result is inferior buildings that endanger people's lives.
Alan Reay Consultants are obviously at fault here. Not only should they have declined to undertake the job using such inexperienced engineers, they allowed a design with numerous defects to go ahead knowing that it would be unsafe. This in my opinion is tantamount to manslaughter.
Under-fire CTV Building designer Dr Alan Reay is the victim of an "agenda'' by royal commission lawyers out to personally lampoon him, an inquiry was told today.
Lawyer Hugh Rennie QC said his client has been unfairly treated during the eight-week hearing into the Christchurch office block's catastrophic collapse during last February's earthquake, which claimed 115 lives.
Stephen Mills QC, counsel assisting the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission, claimed yesterday that design errors by Dr Reay's firm, Alan Reay Consultants Ltd stood out as the "primary cause'' for the disaster.
And today he went further, saying Dr Reay had turned a "Nelsonian blind eye'' to critical structural weaknesses identified in his office block 20 years before it collapsed.
Unfortunately it's not only in Nelson where people are turning a blind eye to badly designed and constructed buildings. New Zealand has a major problem of unenforced building codes whereby councils, designers and construction companies are all in cahoots to build as cheaply and as fast as possible. The end result is inferior buildings that endanger people's lives.
Alan Reay Consultants are obviously at fault here. Not only should they have declined to undertake the job using such inexperienced engineers, they allowed a design with numerous defects to go ahead knowing that it would be unsafe. This in my opinion is tantamount to manslaughter.
