Injaka Bridge Collapse: Lessons Learned - Part Two

a long legal battle
the inquiry commenced in january 1999 and the evidence was completed on 30 november 2001.
dept of labour presiding officer, larry kloppenborg, explained that the inquiry took such a long time to complete due to the complex nature of the case. vke and concor appointed 9 experts between them and the department of labour appointed another 2. the application for a high court interdict to halt the investigation brought by vke in late 1999 also slowed down the process.
there was a great deal of debate, often unnecessarily acrimonious, on the topic of each party's responsibility for his particular contractual duty and field of expertise in the context of temporary and permanent works.
the inquiry sat for about 196 days during this three-year period and various delays were occasioned.
vke brought three applications in the high court during this period. the attitude of vke throughout the inquiry and until the final court application during november 2000, namely that it was entitled as of right to be granted sufficient time to study the expert reports of the other interested party, concor, before it was obliged to submit its own reports and to give evidence. the source of this alleged right has never been provided to the inquiry and of course no such right existed.
further delays resulted from the inability or refusal of the experts to have a meaningful pre-hearing conference to identify areas of dispute and areas of agreement.
the inquiry found both vke and concor to blame for the collapse of the bridge. but this is not the end of the matter, since both vke and concor are legal entities (not natural persons) who acted through their employees and/or directors. the question arises as to which of those employees or directors should or might be held responsible for the acts and omissions of concor and vke, respectively. in this regard, it is not concerned with contractual liability, but with potential delictual or criminal liability for the deaths and injuries resulting from the collapse.
in the context of this lack of experience, mention must again be made of the principle embodied in the maxim imperitia culpae admuneratur which, taken literally, means that ignorance or lack of skill is deemed to be negligence. this principle applies where a person undertakes an activity for which expert knowledge is required while such person knows, or should reasonably know, that he/she lacks the requisite expert knowledge and should therefore not undertake the activity in question.
findings of the inquiry
adv fabricius said the root cause of the problem was inexperienced and unsupervised staff, “we are convinced that, if either of the two parties had appointed suitably qualified and experienced persons to design the permanent works and to design or review the design of the temporary works, this tragedy would not have happened.”
it was stated that although ms gouws, had limited site experience, she was responsible for the design of the bridge, and would thus provide valuable input to the site team. it seems that she was an excellent student. she had limited experience in bridge design though, as can be expected considering that she had only obtained her bachelor degree in civil engineering in 1995. at the time of the collapse she was busy with an honours degree in structural engineering and had not yet been registered as a professional engineer.
mr burger (vke director) testified that a design review of the injaka project did not take place. dr zietsman said that this was not acceptable to him and that there should have been an audit of the bridge design.
predictably, concor and vke both blamed each other for the fact that the slide path and the temporary bearings were not where they should have been. vke’s point of view was that it is the engineer who chooses the slide path, that they had done so and that they had informed concor of their choice in the project specifications. according to them, concor did not comply with these specifications, by putting the slide path and the temporary bearings in different positions than those indicated in the project specifications. for this they are allegedly solely to blame. concor, on the other hand, contended that the positions of the slide path and the temporary bearings were either not properly indicated by vke, or indicated to be in the positions in which they were constructed by concor. more importantly, however, vke, by approving the temporary works, accepted the slide path and temporary bearing positions indicated by concor. having done so, the responsibility for the incorrect bearing positions lies with vke.
it was the inquiries opinion that neither of the aforementioned approaches is correct, and that vke and concor must share responsibility for the incorrect positioning of the slide path and the temporary bearings.