An engineering company has been fined $750,000 after a poorly designed shoring wall collapsed, creating what a magistrate described as 'a very real possibility' of multiple deaths. The Structural Design and Construction Company (SDCC) was handed the penalty by Magistrate Ian Temby in the ACT Industrial Court on Monday, December 8.
The court had previously found the business, now in external administration and expected to be deregistered, guilty of failing to comply with a health and safety duty causing risk of death or serious injury. SDCC was the principal contractor for Geocon's WOVA residential and commercial construction project in Phillip when the wall collapsed in 2022.
The proposed development required excavation of about 13 metres below ground level. The wall, designed by SDCC, collapsed in just a few seconds at 2.30pm on August 6, 2022. Debris travelled about 15 metres from the excavation, and five minutes later, a section of the neighbouring multi-storey car park driveway also collapsed into the excavation.
Magistrate Temby found the work health and safety offence was 'a very serious example' of its type, and the likelihood of collapse 'was obvious and significant'. He said 'multiple fatalities were a very real possibility' and noted that appropriate design measures were 'reasonably practical' and what the company had been paid to provide.
Fortunately, the collapse occurred on a Saturday when no workers were present. However, the multi-storey car park was open and in use, with video footage capturing multiple cars that could have been caught. One vehicle left the car park less than a minute before the wall collapsed. While geotechnical experts could not conclusively determine the cause, contributing factors included rock fractures and rainfall, but the court said the shoring system design should have allowed for groundwater and soil moisture.
