Town of Three Hills v. Bearden Engineering - Expert Witness service, structural assessment of the town hockey arena expansion
The town in Central Alberta is suing the engineering consultant in the expansion of the town's hockey arena, whose roof has partially collapsed under the weight of snow in March 2014. Acting as the Expert Witness on the defendant's side, we managed to prove that the design of the rigid frame steel building by the vendor's engineer was exceedingly lean, which in our opinion must be subtracted from the consultant's liability.
"Failure of the arena roof is due to insufficient margin of safety of the roof purlins, inconsideration of Lateral-Torsional Buckling (LTB) in their design, and inadequate or missing specification of lateral and torsional braces in the vendor's design of the building roof. The duty of the prime consultant was to notice this condition during the acceptance inspection and raise an inquiry with the vendor, because the structure as it was designed and erected is obviously improper."
(From the Expert Witness report)
Photo by R. Renneberg P. Eng, Expert Witness on the Plaintiff's Side