Firm involved in Dublin tunnel fined over collapse

Austrian consultants involved in designing the £180 million Dublin Port Tunnel were convicted in London yesterday of safety failures over a tunnel collapse at Heathrow Airport in 1994.

Geoconsult was fined £500,000 sterling for its role in the collapse of part of a tunnel for the Heathrow Express rail link, described in court as "one of the worst civil engineering disasters in the UK in the last quarter of a century".

The main contractors, Balfour Beatty, were fined a record £1.2 million at the Old Bailey in connection with the collapse at 1 a.m. on October 21st, 1994. It created an enormous crater between Heathrow's two main runways, causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled.

The court was told that the civil engineering failure which led to the collapse could have "unzipped" the Piccadilly underground line and crushed people to death and that it was "luck more than judgment" that this did not happen.

Geoconsult, with headquarters in Salzburg, is an expert in the "new Austrian tunnelling method", which was found wanting by Britain's Health and Safety Executive in its investigation of the disaster. It has also been proposed for the Dublin Port Tunnel.

An Old Bailey jury was told that Geoconsult was responsible for the design and technical supervision of the Heathrow tunnel. It convicted the firm of two charges of failing to ensure the safety both of employees and members of the public. It had denied the charges.

Mr Justice Cresswell said: "This was one of the worst civil engineering disasters in the United Kingdom in the last quarter of a century." Both Balfour Beatty, one of Britain's largest contractors, and Geoconsult had fallen "seriously short" of health and safety regulations.

Geoconsult pioneered the "new Austrian tunnelling method", which involves spraying each section of a newly excavated tunnel with concrete to form a retaining shell. It is cheaper than conventional tunnelling, which relies on building a concrete structure to retain a tunnel as it is bored.

The firm is involved in a consortium with Ove Arup and Partners, consulting engineers, designing the Dublin Port Tunnel, which will link the M1 at Santry with the north port. A public inquiry into the motorway order for the scheme is due to start in late March.

The Austrian method was to be the preferred tunnelling technique, though Dublin Corporation's project team, acting on behalf of the National Roads Authority, has emphasised that other options could be put forward by civil engineering contractors at tender stage.

The Health and Safety Executive's report on the tunnel collapse made 97 recommendations covering legislation, organisation, communication, competence, planning, monitoring and construction of Austrian-method tunnels.