PEGNL AND WHAT ONE ENGINEER'S SANCTION REVEALS

A collapsed formworks incident on the Muskrat Falls project in 2017 exposed the public to problems unrelated to either cost or schedule overruns. When one worker was hospitalized and another seven received medical assistance it became clear, as much as Nalcor did its best to hide the fact, that Nalcor’s management problems resided not just in the St. John’s Office, but also extended to ‘boots on the ground’.

Not only the eight workers, some buried up to their necks in cement, can count themselves lucky. Nalcor management, too, were spared what the Courts might have deemed criminal negligence.

Why is the issue relevant again? Last week the Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland and Labrador (PEGNL) issued a public notice, having sanctioned one of their own. The notice read that structural engineer Yi Ping (Peter) Liu had allowed “his seal to be applied to the structural calculations and design documents of the Draft Tube Elbow Wood Formworks for the Lower Churchill Project at Muskrat Falls….which contained material errors in design criteria and design calculations and ultimately contributed to failure of the structure.”