Diligent audit would have avoided tragedy says BMC report on bridge Collapse, engineers suspended

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday filed its preliminary report in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) bridge collapse case, outlining that diligent structural audit could have avoided the tragedy, which claimed six lives.

BMC also ordered the suspension of an executive engineer and an assistant engineer along with placing one working and two retired engineers under departmental enquiry.

As per order of BMC, the Executive Engineer AR Patil who supervised the structural audit work in 2017-18 and Assistant Engineer SF Kakulte who supervised the repair work in 2013-14 have been suspended with the order of a full-fledged departmental enquiry to be carried out against them.

The preliminary report has observed that the consultant has carried out the inspection of the said bridge in December 2016 and in his bridge inspection report has marked the structural members for the bridge, referring to paint, joint, deflection, cracks, spalling as 'Good'.

In its findings the preliminary report has highlighted that the structural auditor has not raised any alarm for anticipated failure of structural members and not recommended any specific repairs as well as had reported the overall condition of the bridge as 'Good'.

The preliminary report has concluded that "the structural audit was not carried out correctly and major lapses are observed in conducting the structural audit of the bridge on the background of the sudden collapse of the bridge within a short period of submission of a report on August 13, 2018".

"There is a prima facie reason to believe that the structural audit has been conducted an irresponsible and negligent manner. This tragedy could have been avoided if the structural audit had been done diligently", reads the report.

The report has also stated that, "It's apparent that structural audit report has failed to point out an impending failure. In spite of commissioning the report of bridge & spending public money on it, the true condition of the bridge was not brought out. The structural report should be made public".

Six people were killed and over 30 injured after a portion of the overbridge near the crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station collapsed on Thursday evening.