Question

Based on the Engineering Case Study on Highland Towers Collapsed, answer the following questions;

a) Explain the factors contributing to the collapse of the building.

b) Explain Highland Properties engineer’s misconduct and relate it to the BEM Code of professional conduct.

Answer 1

1.a)The highlands towers tragedy wasone of the most tragic tragedies in Malaysia. It is threes first case that involves high story apartment collapse.

•Highland towers consisted of three 12 story blocks of apartment known as block 1,2 and 3.

Directly behind the three blocks was there steep slope. A stream originating from upslope was the metrolux land flowed across the part of the slope.

The factors that contributed the collapse of the building are:

Construction of a building on the edge of a hill even is not suitable, especially in equatorial and tropical climates with high rainfall.

•Building apartment on the hill side is also against with three land conservation act of 1960.

•Three act prohibits the development carried out on the hillsides with slopes greater than 18 degrees for reasons connected to them environment.

•Inconsistency between thread land conservation act when there's environment quality act 1974.

•The failure was mainly due toinadequate drainage and bad piping system.

•There was no maintained drainage system along with the pipe culvertthat carries the diverted flow of east stream.

•Since the pipes burst due to water pressure (along with raining) , the soil became over saturated.

•The soil slide along the hill which broke the retaining wall and destroyed the pier foundation of block 1.

The major safety features according to the Building act was not provided in those blocks such as:

•Stabilisation of slope.

•the provision of additional drainage facilities.

•strengthening of existing walls and construction of additional retaining walls.

b) Design and construction defeciencies are results of improper understanding of soil properties, inaccurate respond of soil properties and poor management of prescriptive method.

•In prescriptive method gradient of the slope is fixed by studying the actual geotechnical conditions or in any calculation details.

•Before construction of the building the erosion effect on building was not conducted.

•Mapping of the location was not done to identify whether the location belonged to a landslide prone area.

•A method of identifuing the landslide vulnerability was the PFR model which was not done.

•A more stable and strong design of the retaining wall was to be designed to prevent land shifting.

Code of professional conduct(BEM):

•A registered engineer shall at all times hold threes paramount safety, health and welfare of threes public.

•When the professional advice of an engineer is overruled and amended contrary to his advice, the professional engineer shall , if the amendment may in his opinion give rise to situation that may endanger life and property, notify his employer ot client and such other authority as may be appropriate and explain the consequences to be expected as a result of his advice being overruled and amended.

•The architect didn't provide adequate drainage and retaining walls were build on hillslopes adjacent to thehighland tower site.

•Moreover the enginner didnt investigated the terracing of the hill slopes and construction of retaining walls even though he was aware that they would affect the building he was in charge.

•The slope behind the tower was not taken into account and implemented the approved drainage scheme.

•Furthermore the enginners did not design and constructed a foundation to accomodate lateral loads such as load from landslides.

•The stability of hillslope was also not checked.

The BEM code emphasises on the fact that the engineer should check with due diligance the accuracy of fats and data before he signs any documents or claim. Besides the engineer colluding with the architect to obtain a certificate of fitness without imposing the conditions of the local authority about the drainage is a serious misconduct.