The CTV Building in Christchurch, Collapse During the Earthquake of That Date - Assignment Example

? The CTV Building collapse during an earthquake Executive summary CTV Building is an office premise that had faced disintegration due to the tremorsan earthquake that occurred in Christchurch. The report analyses the reasons for the collapse of the CTV Building which houses several offices and how the various stakeholders of this incident could be affected. Contents Executive summary 2 Introduction 4 Detection of the key role players 5 Identification of stakeholders 7 Evaluation of consequences 8 Summary and conclusions 9 References 10 Introduction The CTV Building housed a lot of offices including the office of Canterbury Television. The building was constructed at the City centre of Christchurch. On the 22nd of February when the massive earthquake took place the most critically affected building was this CTV building. The earthquake took lives of 115 individuals working in that building. Since the happening of that incident, the structural integrity of the building has been questioned. Investigation on the construction methodology and background check revealed a long drawn record of errors relating to construction and engineering. The study aims at identifying the stakeholders who have been affected explicitly or implicitly and the key role players who had been associated with the entire incident. The study also tries to find an answer to the various management and organizational concerns relating to the issue. Case Analysis Government had sent for the Royal commission in order to find out the reasons for such casualties. The commission after the investigation posted its report which exposed the fact that the building was vulnerable at the base due to defects in the construction designs. The supporting columns did not have any flexibility and the asymmetrical layout was the reason which the building had collapsed like a pack of cards. In this context the key role players whose ignorance and carelessness has led to this massacre has to be identified. Detection of the key role players Chief Engineer: The main person who was concerned with the faulty design was the chief engineer. He should be considered as the one who should be the most responsible for the occurrence of the incident. The engineer who was appointed was not the one who was qualified enough to do it. Hence it gave rise to such circumstances. A number of defects relating to the design had been identified which had led to this collapse. The construction of any building requires technical knowhow relating to architecture and along with that precision. Construction Manager: Along with the chief engineer, the manager of the entire process is equally responsible. Management of an architectural project requires technical knowledge along with practical experience. A person who lacks such skills should not approach such large scale projects. A little deeper encounter with the entire issue reveals the fact that there was lack in proper strategy formulation, planning, implementation and maintenance which are essential for any project to be successful. Architect of the building: Post earthquake records revealed the fact that there were flaws in the entire designing of the building (Fur and Deutsche, 2007, p.11). The asymmetric design was the reason why the building collapsed so easily. A proper earthquake resistant building must have the roofs and floor slabs in the horizontal planes. The columns and beams should have been properly interconnected ensuring strength of the building. Operations Manager: This person is responsible for the selection of the materials which are necessary for the construction. The materials should be shock resistant in order to be categorized as safe materials. The safety level of the building would depend on the selection of the materials. The building safety and lives of people would be at stake if they are not protected against the tremors of an earthquake in an earthquake prone zone. Junior Engineers: The junior engineers who were responsible for the project were not capable. They were sent for approval of the project. Investigation into the matter exposed the fact that they had given green signal to the project even though they did not know the correct viability of the project. Suppliers of the Materials of Construction: The suppliers who had provided for the materials must have done that with inferior quality materials or with materials which were not right for construction of building of such height (National Institute of Building Science, 2013, p.8). Government of the State: Since for setting up any building in the country the permission of the government is essential and the government in turn would approve of or reject the project as according to the present condition. In this case the government must have overlooked the matter and had conducted their survey sending people who were inefficient. Audit Team: A regular audit team should survey the building ensuring the safety standards and check if there is any possibility of hazard taking place. But such a thing did not happen. Rescue team: The team who were sent for the rescue operations must have arrived in late or they had defect in the disaster management process which otherwise could have saved a lot additional lives than they actually could. People inside the building: The people which include the management of the respective companies who have their offices inside the building were to some extent responsible because people who work in an earthquake prone zone should have some basic disaster management skills and they should have known the basic thumb rules of protection against earthquake like taking shelter in the empty place below the staircase in times of the incident. Identification of stakeholders Owner of Building: The building housed office premises and hence the building must be under the ownership of a company or an individual. The collapse of the building would cause harm to this entity the most. Insurance Companies: Most office premises are insured and hence due to the devastation the insurance companies have to pay for the damage. The insurance companies would actually care if such incident had occurred and it is important for them to find out the reason why this thing has happened. Industry business Associations: They are a part of the advisory committees of the companies that have offices in that building. They should have their opinion while the authority plans to restructure the entire building. Project Consultants: They will have to ensure that the previous flaw is corrected and it is not repeated because they will have to provide advisory services in future. So they have to provide effective solutions addressing this problem. Facilitators: The regional facilitators are the ones who had exerted the initial support to the authority of the building for funding the entire construction project. They will now have to ensure before providing credit because in the previous incident the facilitators did not get a good refund of their money. The Companies: The companies which had set up their offices in the building had paid a lot of amount of money for either buying or taking lease of the premises. They would be affected by such collapse and it may happen that their infrastructure had been damaged and company records had been destroyed in the incident of earthquake. Suppliers of Raw Materials: Since it was found out form the investigation that the wrong usage of raw material was to some extent responsible it may lead to the change in suppliers and the company can give the contract to a different set of suppliers. Political Parties of that Region: If the damages are not properly managed and compensation is not given adequately then the political party would have problem in getting the votes in the next election. Residents of the place: The residents of the place would also face the brunt of the entire incident in terms of pollution and other damages because it would affect it locally. Community Groups: They would come forward to provide help and support to the victims of the incident and hence they need to know to what extent the damage has occurred and what has caused the damage (Xu, 2012, p.32). They also might collect funds for the reconstruction of the buildings. Evaluation of consequences The above mentioned key role players could have prevented the entire situation only provided each party did their work diligently. Here we can see that there is negligence and disregard among all the key role players which collectively contributed to the occurrence of the building devastation. Proper audit and investigation before the occurrence of the incident would have stopped it from happening and saved more lives (Gupta, 2003. p.87). Summary and conclusions The report analyses the reasons and the people involved in the process. It finds out that if these people had been a little more careful this situation could have been avoided. The engineers on their part had approved projects that were not viable. It can also be concluded that before the project was undertaken there was lack of strict vigilance and the proper process of project approval was not undertaken. There were flaws in selection of the team members, the team of engineers, the materials supplied failed to match up with the standards and the improper execution of the constructions mechanisms can be cited as the reasons behind the collapse. The safety standards were not followed in spite the building falling within an earthquake prone area (Coppola, 2010 p.309). The regular checks of the vigilance team and from the government were not undertaken and so there was no one to clear the doubt situation. Although the building had good insurance coverage the people working inside the building were not trained with adequate training which may come in handy in situations of disasters. References Fur, Deutsche, G., 2007. Multi-stakeholder management: tools for stakeholder analysis: 10 building blocks for designing participatory systems of cooperation. Available at: http://www.fsnnetwork.org/sites/default/files/en-svmp-instrumente-akteuersanalyse.pdf. [Accessed: 16 August 2013]. National Institute of Building Science, 2013., Project planning, delivery and controls. . Available at: http://www.wbdg.org/project/pm.php. [Accessed: 16 August 2013]. Xu, Q. 2012. Starting from Zero: Rebuilding CTV Building in Christchurch. Auckland: University of Auckland. Gupta, H.K., 2003, Disaster Management, Indian National Science Academy: Universities Press. Coppola D.P., 2010, Introduction to International Disaster Management, Burlington, MA: Elsevier. Read More