The inter-ministerial committee appointed following the tragedy at the Versailles Hall, in which 23 people died and hundreds were injured when the floor of the top storey caved in, has determined that responsibility for inspecting new building methods will fall on the building's designers. The committee demands that designers and inspectors declare, when seeking building permits and at the finished stage, that the building has been built using a new method and that the method has met the criteria of the standards committee, set up to oversee these methods.
The committee included materials, components, products or work methods in its definition of new methods for which no standard exists, but which can be easily adopted by the Israel Standards.
Minister of Housing and Construction Natan Sharansky appointed the committee, headed by Prof. Rachel Baker, following the tragedy that took place in May 2001.
The committee criticized the Minister of the Interior for not appointing an expert to check out new building methods, despite the regulations on planning and building in Israel that stipulate precisely that new building methods require a professional opinion by an expert appointed by the Ministry of the Interior.
The committee believes the situation arose because in Israel local planning committee engineers do not inspect the engineering blueprints accompanying requests for building approvals and are therefore unaware that a building may be designed using new methods or materials.
The committee also notes that even though the Ministry of Housing and Construction inspects the new methods through the National Building Research Institute at the Haifa Technion on public projects, the private sector is not included. This explains how an unapproved building method was used. The committee's report emphasizes that in other countries, those responsible for issuing building permits do not allow new methods to be used until they are thoroughly tested and proven. The tests are financed by the inventor of the new method.
The committee recommends that the Minister of the Interior set up a body to oversee the testing of new building methods within six months. The body would be part of the Building Research Institute. Another recommendation is that the Minister orders this body to submit draft work regulations within three months of being set up
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 2 September, 2001