“Although the geotechnical report is evaluated by the Ministry of Housing, the permit to start excavations is given by the City Council where said report is not critically evaluated.”.
SANTO DOMINGO.- The Colonial Zone of the city of Santo Domingo presents particular problems that make a strict application of the “R0 24 Regulation for Geotechnical Studies in Buildings” imperative, because its constructions were normally built with zero boundary and their structural system of masonry without reinforcements, stated Tirso Álvarez Fermín, civil engineer specializing in Geotechnical engineering.
“This makes these structures very fragile when compared to modern framed and reinforced concrete constructions. Regulation R-024 contains safety criteria for the overall stability of slopes and for deformations induced by excavations,” said the specialist, who holds a PhD and graduated in 1997 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA.
His considerations were expressed to the digital newspaper El Inmobiliario regarding the collapse that occurred last week at the facilities of the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors (CODIA), whose preliminary results of the study carried out to determine the causes of the collapse, showed that it was due to excavations made by a construction that is being built next to the guild building.
The specialist recommends that the permit issued to carry out excavations in the works be unified, so that the approval to start implies a technical review of the geotechnical report and the effects that these would generate on the existing adjacent structures.
The “Regulation R0 24 for Geotechnical Studies in Buildings”, of which Álvarez Fermín is the author, was issued by the State Secretariat of Public Works and Communications (SEOPC) in 2006, which until the creation of the Ministry of Housing, Habitat and Buildings (MIVHED) was responsible for receiving and evaluating geotechnical reports as part of the process of issuing a building permit.
This function has been transferred to MIVHED and stipulates that excavations cannot be carried out without first having conducted a geotechnical study aimed exclusively at evaluating the impact of the excavations on existing buildings and adjacent areas.
“Although the geotechnical report is evaluated by the Ministry of Housing, the permit to start excavations is given by the City Council where said report is not critically evaluated,” the geologist stated.
He explained that the legal framework of the regulations is established so that this type of event does not occur with the frequency that has been happening both in Santo Domingo and in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros
“Another important conclusion from this unfortunate accident is that we must establish very specific, strict criteria for old areas like the Colonial City, where structures are more susceptible to collapse than in other areas,” he stated.
The specialist considered that "the carrying out of excavations in that area should be declared illegal without first pre-supporting the perimeter with a shoring system such as sheet piling, diaphragm walls, support systems such as soil nailing or anchors.".
He said that basements should not be excavated in order to then attempt to pour retaining walls next to structures in the Colonial Zone.
Regarding the regulations
Regulation R0 24 for Geotechnical Studies in Buildings was created by decree 577-06 and establishes that only a civil engineer or related professional with a master's degree in geotechnical engineering, with exequatur and registered with CODIA, with experience and knowledge in the field of geotechnical engineering, may carry out geotechnical studies.
It establishes that the owner or technical manager of the project must submit to the then MOPC, now Ministry of Housing, along with the project license application documents, a geotechnical study for all new construction or expansion and for excavations, including those adjacent to existing buildings.
“Additional field investigations will be carried out as deemed necessary by the geotechnical engineer to assess the presence of caverns, slope stability, soil strength, depth of bearing strata, compressibility, liquefaction, expansion potential and effects of variations in moisture content on strength,” the document states.
