A government team, which probed the recent collapse of a section of the Fiesta Hotel in Hanover, has attributed the accident to the failure of the contractor to use metal scaffolding and props in the construction work.

The team, which included Minister of State for Transport and Works, Joseph Hibbert, and Minister of State for Local Government Robert Montaque, has recommended that the Hanover Parish Council introduce penalties for breaches of its terms and conditions for building approvals.

Four persons, including a Dominican engineer, were injured on the hotel site on Thursday, September 20, when an upper-level concrete slab collapsed. This was the second such collapse of formwork at the site.

Hibbert and Montaque, along with a technical team, were assigned by Prime Minister Bruce Golding, under whose ministry local government falls, to investigate the matter and make a report to him.

In their report to the Prime Minister, the team said that:

“The cause of collapse is attributed to a failure of individual false-work props supporting the freshly poured concrete, which resulted in a progressive collapse of the entire section under construction.

“The temporary false-work was comprised of locally sourced ’round wood posts’ stacked and simply nailed at mid-height upon each other to make up the required ground-to-floor false-work height (six metres).”

The report stated that the Parish Council, in its conditions of construction approval to the developer, stipulated that “only quality metal scaffolding and false-work props be used in the construction of the concrete works”. This condition was subsequently relaxed to allow for a variant solution comprising a mix of “4×4” sawn timber and metal scaffolding and false-work props.

The team concluded that if the the conditions laid down by the Council were followed, “the likelihood of a collapse would have been minimised.”

They suggested that these conditions must be adhered to for any similar concrete works on the Fiesta site.

The team also recommended that:

. the Parish Council obtain from the developer a revised programme for the remaining works to complete this phase of the project and require that no further works proceed without its prior consent;

. the approval from the Council should require strict adherence, on the part of the developer, to the applicable conditions of approval and the further use of locally sourced round wood props be discontinued;

. with immediate effect, the developer should be required to provide all workers and approved visitors to the site with requisite safety gears, including helmets and reflector vests;

. and that in light of the accidents, the Parish Council should consider formulating and issuing, as deemed appropriate, specific penalties for breaches committed by contractors of any of its terms and conditions of approval.

The 1,600-room hotel is being built by Spanish investors at a cost of US$150 million (J$10 billion).