Industry must learn from airport collapse

The construction industry should take on board some hard lessons from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport collapse, according to the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

"Programme restraints should never impact on safety and quality," said ICE vice president Gordon Masterton. "It is too early to say if a construction error or design defect caused the Paris collapse, but buildings with vast amounts of public accessing them should have rigorous risk assessments."

Masterton said the cylindrical structure at Charles de Gaulle had a lot of inherent strength, but that was providing "the supporting pylons remained stable". He believes the investigation should look at the possibility that one of the pylons moved more than it should have when it was settling.

"The loading and unloading possibilities should also be examined. An examination into whether the structure would still stand if one of the supporting pylons was knocked or completely taken out by a vehicle for example, should have taken place. The roof structure should obviously be looked at too. There are a lot of openings in the cylinder and each of those could cause added stress on the structure," he added.

Vinci subsidiary GTM Construction was the concrete construction specialist on the project, while a consortium of Eiffel Construction Metallique and Laubeuf SAS were responsible for the glass roof. The structural engineer was Sechaud et Bossuyt.

An Eiffel spokeswoman told CJ: "Eiffel is not responsible for what happened." She said any further correspondence should be directed to GTM.

A GTM spokesman said the collapse is impossible to explain at this stage. Its work was independently inspected and accepted by the client, Aéroports de Paris, he added.

As CJ went to press yesterday (Monday), fresh cracking sounds were reported at the airport.