Shoring retaining wall failure in Virginia prompts apartment building evacuation

It seems like every time I turn around these days there is another amazing tunnel project in the news. The level of engineering brought to bear on these challenges is phenomenal, whether it’s in the […]

The City of Vancouver is suing a developer, excavation contractor and their consulting engineer for the costs of repairs, overtime for city employees and lost revenue from parking meters etc stemming from an apparent failure of a shoring system that formed a 30-meter sinkhole. No mention of the developer’s name or the engineer, but the contractor was Matcon Excavation and Shoring. The site will be the future home of high-rise condominiums…if the City lifts it’s stop work order.

The failure of the shoring caused a break inf a 20-cm water main ultimately flooding the site. It also necessitated the closure of the adjacent street. Of course this invites the whole chicken or the egg scenario. The defendants will probably argue that the water line failed first causing the failure of the shoring, but of course the City Engineer, Tom Timm was not shy about fingering the shoring as being deficient.

"It’s some kind of a failure of the shoring system . . . either a design issue or the way it was put in place."

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Deep Excavation, LLC has an excellent blog post on how geotechnical engineers should provide geotechnical parameters for use by a shoring designer. Mr. Konstantakos notes that most of us geotechnical engineers provide only lateral earth […]