Council Caper

Where breaking the law could have saved a structural collapse.

In a suburb of Lake Macquarie a family decided to renovate their house. Much like they do on TV. They became my clients after they realised there was potential in adding a room. They had noticed that the existing garage, now converted into a rumpus room, was so high above the street that a garage could be excavated underneath. And they had begun excavation to test the feasibility of their idea. They needed an engineer to confirm it was feasible. I could recommend the engineer.

I with the engineer at the site visit saw the excavation. Our client seemed aware he was allowed to dig to 1m on his property. I later trawled though the council requirements and excavations to 1m were indeed exempt development in all zones according to LEP 2004, Schedule 1, page 85. It did not say there is anywhere on any site that could not be cut up to one metre. If it did, TV programs like Backyard Blitz would be stopped in their tracks.

As the excavation was so close to footings the engineer decided underpinning work was urgent and within a week had drawings for the work to stabilise the site. Which the client proceeded to carry out. My drawings for the new extension were separate and were not treated as urgent.

The engineer was not phased by the situation. People digging a bit in subfloor spaces to put in basements is very common. One client of the engineer's had undercut the whole house and had a retaining wall of over 2m, before they thought to call in an engineer. And even then they were calling in the engineer to certify, of all things, the slab for the floor! But the engineer commented they had not been too worried. As the client worked in the mines, it was well and truly over designed. The engineer had not ever seen such massive sections of steel supporting a house! As far as teh enineer was concerend their job was to provide design to make situations safe.

Then one day the client came into my office of the street. He told me we needed to add the underpinning work to my drawings and submit an application, as a Council officer had stopped all work and issued a fine for six hundred dollars. I asked what they had done. They had cut the opening in the front of the sub-wall which they needed to do to excavate to the levels for the underpinning. He said that the Council officer said if he did any further work he would be fined another six hundred dollars. The client told me he had told the council officer that he thought he had to finish the concreting work now he had completed the excavation for the underpinning, for safety reasons.

According to the client, the Council officer became so incoherent he started waving his hands in the air. I asked if $600 in the whole scheme of cost was really that much and the client said “no”. I said “There you are! Go for it”. I said safety was of first importance but added that perhaps Council approval for the other work may be more difficult. The client thought of his application for a pool. The client, however, seemed most worried that the Council officer seemed to know what he was doing as he did it, as if someone was spying on him.

I was close to finishing the drawings for the extension and added the underpinning work as requested.

The client told me when he picked up my drawings that he had rung Council to tell them he thought there was a problem with not completing the work the engineer had documented under his house now he had started. He told them that now the soil was all taken out he need to stabilise it with the concreting work.
The council officer, he said, had told him to fill it back in to stabilize it!.
I had a mental vision of a team of dump trucks trying to squeeze in under the house to put the dirt back. But even if they could it would be loose dirt. I shuddered.
I said, “Well, yes that would be OK if you could compact it!” And I thought of a roller trying to fit in as the fill ever got higher under the floor. Compacting just could not be done!
The client, who has a fair idea of construction may have had the same vision, for he completed the thought adding, “Which is impossible!”
The client told me they had pointed out that it seemed unreasonable to not make the best of the situation, rather than being stubborn. As far as he was concerned he needed to complete the work to make it safe.

When I told the engineer, they put it plainly, the council officer had given advice that could be negligent. Everyone with any knowledge of building should know that loose soil compacts under load. Loose soil cannot stop the footings moving. Concrete underpinning as had been detailed would be the only way to do it.

The client later returned to my office and told me he had taken the drawings to Council and a planner and the same council officer had said they could not approve something already built. Alledgedly the council officer said that he had already given one suggestion to stabilise the site – to which the client replied that it was not a suggestion at all.
The Council officer then alledgedly suggested that the client prop the existing structure.
At that point I thought of the structural implications of propping and my mind boggled as I thought of the excavation required to put in steel beams and the notices and fences to keep out people. That so called 'solution' was 'work'. I thought of the amount of steel and labour required.

When later I told the engineer, they were succinct, “Ask them (council) to tell you how to do that.”

At that stage it was clear Council did not have any idea of the real structural implications. To top it all off the planner had asked the client to have the gutter to the boundary put on the drawings. I was dumbfounded. At a glance it was clear that the gutters were already shown as being on the other wall. The roof falls were clearly shown on the drawings and no gutter was required. The planner also bethought himself of my client's application for a pool that Council were now delaying, and asked that the gates and fences be shown on my drawings, despite the pool being a separate application by the pool manufacturer. I updated the drawings. I assumed the client lodged them with no problems.

Some time passed. And nothing happened. The house was not on either my or the engineer's regular routes. It rained. It was sunny. Two months passed.

One week it rained off and on. Then the next day there was a beautiful clear blue sky. The Engineer got a phone call at 8am. Our client was not too good. It was so serious the engineer left without breakfast.

One side of the house had collapsed into the excavation. The engineer, took a truck and some railway sleepers that had been used for garden bed edges. The engineer worked all that morning and into the afternoon with the SES to stabilize the part of the house that had fallen. Luckily the room had remained relatively intact. I visited in the early afternoon and and they had saved the frame of the room and the roof. It was skew but propped. It was not yet stable. The engineer, who was still on site, confirmed that the collapse was due to water in the soil from runoff from the rain the week before and any further rain could mean they could lose the whole house. We all agreed we would pray for fine weather.

They would later jack the room back up. The aspect that was most disturbing was that it had happened in the early hours of the morning and the adjacent rooms teetering in the brink of collapse were bedrooms, in one of which slept the two children.

The next day which was a Sunday the engineer rang the Council and told them that remedial work must be immediately carried out as well as work that had been detailed originally to stabilize the site.

The person at the Council emergency number had heard of the situation. The head of the department was summoned and told the engineer the work was OK to proceed and they would release all the plans. They said it had been discussed. They had probably, like us, dissected the events leading to the situation. The engineer was there before 9 am and they had seen the council inspector. How had he gotten there so fast?

In the whole situation, there was nothing I or the engineer could have done otherwise. I would take on the project again, because I was needed. Someone had to do the job. In hind sight, I wish I had been stronger in my advice to the client to go ahead with the work despite the fine, and to have given advice to the client that they needed to have the engineer talk to the Council.

Laws are designed to make the world safer. It may be ethically right to enforce a law, but it must be morally wrong to enforce a law that could result in financial loss at the least or physical harm or death. The worst aspect is not that the authority did not heed the client's concerns regarding safety, but that they themselves were oblivious to the fact that the situation was indeed a matter of safety.

I was lucky in this situation as the client came to me afterwards to discuss whether the matter should be pursued. I asked what the loss would be. He said the loss was around $20,000. This was phenomenally low. His whole family and neighbours had rallied round had helped, many donating labour. We discussed as many issues as we could think of back and forth. The conclusion was that the emotional stress in pursuing justice could mean it would not be worth winning. I think I pointed out that the long time taken to achieve an outcome, which was not sure, would mean they would have the emotional toll of re-living the experience. And the wife and children had not coped well. Now their experience was one of the joy of friends who had come to help, and they could just move on and try to forget it.

But I doubt if I can forget it. I remember how blue the sky was that day.