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SINGAPORE \u2013 A construction firm overseeing the excavation of a tunnel was fined $84,000 on July 24 after pleading guilty to work lapses leading to a sinkhole<\/span><\/a> that closed traffic for about a week in November 2022.<\/p>\n The tunnelling works caused a part of Farrer Road to collapse, which led to a sinkhole forming on a slip road leading from Holland Road to Farrer Road on Nov 15, 2022.<\/p>\n On July 24, a company representative from Nishimatsu Construction pleaded guilty to three charges under the Building Control Act. Three similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.<\/p>\n In one of the charges, Nishimatsu Construction admitted to failing to comply with the conditions set out in a structural work permit, including for failing to monitor and review key tunnelling operational parameters.<\/p>\n The Japanese firm was also charged with deviating from the approved plans, and failing to carry out the necessary probe drilling and grouting from ground surface at the appropriate juncture.<\/p>\n The failures of the firm later led to an 8m-long, 4m-wide, and more than 3m-deep sinkhole.<\/p>\n Nishimatsu Construction had been appointed by national water agency PUB to carry out building works for the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System Phase 2<\/span><\/a> in Farrer Road.<\/p>\n As part of the job, the company was tasked with excavating and constructing three tunnels with a diameter of more than 2m.<\/p>\n The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) said the collapse occurred when the ground in front of a tunnel boring machine (TBM) that was undergoing maintenance destabilised.<\/p>\n A TBM works by cutting the earth in front of it and conveying it to the back of the machine, where it is transported to the surface. The machine can also install concrete rings at each excavated section.<\/p>\n These rings form the tunnel walls.<\/p>\n A qualified person appointed by Nishimatsu Construction, Kho Chza Main, 56, is facing two charges<\/span><\/a> under the Building Control Act and one charge under the Building Control Regulations.<\/p>\n He is accused of failing to assess the ground conditions at the site and construction of the tunnel in relation to their impact on the geotechnical aspect of the design, and failing to continuously monitor and review the key tunnelling operational parameter.<\/p>\n Kho will return to court on July 31.<\/p>\n A second man, Kam Mun Wai, 58, who was appointed by the company as a qualified person, faces one charge under the Building Control Regulations.<\/p>\n Kam allegedly failed to assess the monitoring results and site conditions at the locations around Farrer Road. His case has been fixed for a pre-trial conference on July 31.<\/p>\n A third man, Ko Luan Bock, 67, was handed a charge under the Building Control Act, after he allegedly failed to comply with conditions under the working permit that resulted in excessive soil settlement and a road depression at the incident site.<\/p>\n Ko will return to court on July 31.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 A construction firm overseeing the excavation of a tunnel was fined $84,000 on July 24 after pleading guilty to work lapses leading to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/71355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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