Reay says sorry, acknowledges error in relying on staff
"There should be an immediate audit and review of every building this firm has designed."
Featured commentDr Alan Reay acknowledged today that in hindsight he should not have relied on an underling to carry out structural design of Christchurch's ill-fated CTV building.
The founder of Alan Reay Consulting was giving evidence at the Royal Commission hearing into the CTV building collapse in the February 2011 earthquake which killed 115 people.
In response to questions from one of the royal commission panel, Mr Reay said he was uncertain about what he should have done at the time.
“I look back in time and wonder how all this happened,” he said.
At the outset of the eight-week hearing Mr Reay had told the commission he had every faith in employee David Harding, who had carried out the design drawings.
But yesterday and today he acknowledged that after hearing more evidence he had developed doubts about strengthening elements of the design.
“I believed I was right to rely on him, but clearly that was the wrong decision.”
During several sessions of cross-examination, Mr Reay said that he was responsible as the head of the firm.
Yesterday he gave another apology to the families of the victims.
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Comments and questions7
There should be an immediate audit and review of every building this firm has designed.
bit late probably...a lot have already gone.
One of the most striking hi-profile examples of Reay's work and one of the newer ones (from the early 2000s) was the multi-million dollar apartments in Peterborough Street known as "The Establishment" which literally "tipped over" in the quakes. Foundations were simply inadequate
He must have finally got some legal advice about his disastrous attitude to date.
What a cold heart of this man, his comments just put a sharp knife in my heart, he didn't show any sympathy or solidarity with the families who lost their love ones, I lost my sister and couldn't recover emotionally from that till today, this person didn't think at all about that, I don't believe in his apology, now he's doing it because of pressure, how would be his reaction if his daughter, son, brother or sister would be the person who died in there?? same reaction???
Anyone worth their salt in the structural engineering consultancy field knows what this is all about.
This is what happens when a principal employs an inexperienced (& possibly cheap) engineer, hands him some templates of calculations and shoves him to the corner (on his own) with the instruction: bare minimum compliance to the code (aka make it cheap for the owner developer) and be efficient (aka churn it out fast so that I can make more money out of this project).
After all, the firm has a professional indemnity insurance policy of min $200,000.
Alan Reay only apologizes now that he realizes that with his consultancy the buck stops at the top ! surely this will bankrupt him.
I doubt it , he's off to the Med this week for a bit of R&R on his yacht I'm told ....