Management Corporation Strata Title Plan No 2757 v Lee Mow Woo (practising under the firm of Engineers Partnership)

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Lee Seiu Kin J
• Judgment Date: 03 May 2011
• Neutral Citation: [2011] SGHC 112
• Citation: [2011] SGHC 112
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 06 May 2011
• Docket Number: Suit No 845 of 2008
• Plaintiff Counsel: Tan Teng Muan, Wong Khai Leng and Sharifah Farhana Binte Hasan Alsagoff (Mallal & Namazie)for the plaintiff
• Defendant Counsel: Lee Chin Seon (C S Lee) and Ng Thin Wah (Timothy Ong Lim & Partners)
• Subject Matter: Tort,Building and construction
• Hearing Date: 17 September 2010,15 September 2010,13 September 2010,12 November 2010,10 November 2010,21 September 2010,16 September 2010,20 September 2010

Lee Seiu Kin J: Introduction

The plaintiff is the management corporation of strata title no 2757, which is an industrial development known as Northlink Development (“the Development”) located at 10 Admiralty Street, Singapore 757695. The Development comprises three connected blocks of 6-storey light industrial buildings (“the Building”) subdivided into 545 individual subsidiary units. The defendant is a consultant engineer and he had carried out the civil, structural and foundation design for the Development.

The plaintiff’s claims against the defendant are in negligence – the plaintiff alleges that the defendant’s design of the Building was negligent and this had resulted in defects therein which require to be rectified. The alleged defects are in the following areas of the Building: expansion joints and surrounding areas; lift motor rooms; and mezzanine floors.

In the course of the trial, the parties reached a settlement on items (b) and (c) with the defendant agreeing to pay the plaintiff damages of $49,000 in relation to the lift motor rooms and $5,225 in relation to the mezzanine floors. The trial then proceeded on item (a), viz the expansion joints and surrounding areas. This claim arose from cracks discovered at the ends of several beams as well as at the edges of some corbels which are protrusions from columns to support beams. In the run up to the trial, both parties prepared expert reports in support of their respective positions. At the commencement of the trial, the parties’ experts attended a series of hearings in chambers which resulted in an agreement on a substantial number of points in relation to their evidence, leading to a considerable reduction of the issues in dispute. In the event, the parties agreed that the issue turns on whether the defendant’s design of the corbel/beam configurations at the expansion joints and surrounding areas (“the Design”) is defective.

The nub of the plaintiff’s case is that the Design was not in compliance with the requirements of the British Standards Institution’s (BSI) Code of Practice BS 8110:Part 1:1985 (“the Code”), in particular cl 5.2 thereof. The effect of this provision is that the bearing pad (which sits between the beam and the corbel, and transfers the load from the former to the latter) may only be located within the area where the steel reinforcement bars (“rebars”) are horizontal in both the beam and corbel. The reason offered by the plaintiff’s expert is that the part of the concrete where the rebars are bent does not have the ability to bear the tensile forces that would result from the load. In determining the dimensions of the corbels, the defendant had failed to take this factor into account and had specified corbel dimensions that, given the bar bending radius of the rebars selected, had insufficient overlap of horizontal bars; in some cases there was no overlap at all.

The nub of the defendant’s case is that this was not a defective design. The defendant did not dispute that, given the dimensions and rebar sizes, there was either very little or no overlap of horizontal rebars. However the defendant’s position is as follows: Clause 5.2 of the Code does not apply to it as it is stated therein that this clause is only applicable to precast concrete whereas the corbels and beams in question were cast in situ (ie cast on site). The Code is only for guidance and non-compliance per se does not render a design inadequate: what was important was that it was calculated to be able to safely bear the design loads, based on engineering principles.

In relation to contention (a) above, the plaintiff’s expert opined that the requirements for in situ concrete construction in fact required more stringent constraints compared to precast concrete. This is because in the latter case the concrete elements are cast under controlled factory conditions and a higher level of quality control is achieved. As there is no other provision for corbels in the Code, the prudent thing for a designer to do would be at least to comply with the provisions of cl 5.2. Indeed, an extract from Allen: “Reinforced Concrete Design to BS8110” (marked as exhibit 3PE) tendered by the plaintiff’s expert, at Cap 10, suggests that the Code be used as well for corbels...