Sultan+Mizan+Zainal+Abidin+Stadium+Roof+Collapse

Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium Roof Collapse //Andrew Aumiller, AE537 2015 // toc
 * Gong Badak, Terengganu - June 2, 2009 **

=Introduction= Just one year after opening its doors for the 2008 Sukma Games one half of the roof collapsed onto the stadium seats below. Luckily only a few electrical workers and cleaners were in the stadium at the time and were not harmed in the collapse. The stadium has a capacity of 50,000 and is supposed to be the main stage of the Terengganu Sports Complex. (Murali, 2009). The stadiums main usage would be to host the states futball matches in the Malaysia Super League and was meant to replace the old Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah Stadium. The cause of the collapse like many collapses can be linked back to many causes adding up to the failure including, inadequate design, poor quality control, and improper materials among others.

Four years after the collapse the fallen roof had been removed and workers were hard at work dismantling the rest of the roof that had not fallen. As they were working on February 20th 2013 the rest of the roof came crashing down this time injuring five workers. The workers had taken down almost all of the roofing and were working on taking down the steel space frame structure of the roof. (Kaos, 2013).

Finally in spring of 2015 the stadium roofs were all gone and the stadium was partially reopened for futball matches with only half of the stands open for seating. The games can also only be played during the day because the lights for the stadium were attached to the roof. Moving forward the government hopes to redesign and construct the roofs to bring the stadium back to the standard that they had hoped for in 2008 when it was completed. (Bernama, 2015).

=Events Leading Up to the Collapse=

The stadium had been opened for a year before the collapse took place. The design and construction of the building had been on an extremely fast passed schedule to insure the stadium was ready for the 2008 Sukma Games. The roof structure design was also changed to the light frame steel structure very late in the design meaning the time spent designing it was questionable at best. This games are similar to the Olympics where the different states within Malaysia compete against one another. The games were competed with no issues until June 2nd 2009.

Prior to the collapse problems with the structure of the roof had already begun. Damage in the frames of the roof along with bang like noises coming from the roof had been observed. Ironically repairs for the roof were actually scheduled for the exact day in which the roof came down. ( Hatzikiriakos, 2013).

=Collapse= At 9am in the morning workers were doing their normal cleaning and maintenance when they heard a huge crashing sound. One worker said it was so load that they thought a plane had crashed into the stadium. (Murali, 2009). The supports at the outside of the stadium that held up the enormous cantilevered roof had failed and the roof had fallen on to the stadiums seating below. Luckily the workers in the stadium were not under the roof and no one was hurt in the collapse. A few vehicles outside the stadium were damaged by the debris. The collapse started at the almost 100 foot span from the edge of the stadium to the concrete buttress holding up the end of the crescent shape. This caused the supports attached to the outside of the stadium then proceeded to fail, resulting in the entire half of the roof to fall and cover the entire seating area below. The collapse of the roof not only damaged seating but also the main entrance to the stadium and the royal box.

=

= =Investigation & Cause of Failure= An investigation of the failure was preformed after the collapse by the government of Malaysia. The report was finished in December of 2009 but has not been released to the public and to obtain a copy it costs a large amount of money to purchase from the government. This is in stark contrast to how most investigations of building failures are conducted in the United States. In the States this report would have been made public so that the engineering and construction community could learn from the mistakes made. This along with other issues in how the stadium was originally constructed imply the presence of corruption in the government. (Hassim, 2010). Luckily there are summaries of the report available as an alternative. As for the cause of the failure in short everything from the design through construction was done incorrectly. Failures in every aspect of the building also leads to questioning about the owner which is also the government and their motivations when starting the project. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(Chiang, 2010).

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The government wanted the stadium ready for the Sukma Games in 2008 that much is obvious. The state was obviously pressured to have the best facilities when hosting the rest of the country. This could lead to owners specifying deadlines that did not allow for enough time to make a safe structure. The multiple causes found in the report included an inadequate design, failure in erection which caused the geometry of the roof to be incorrect, and minimal quality control checks during construction which lead to building materials and construction processes that did not meet specifications.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">First looking at the design process, it was found that the support conditions for the roof were incorrectly analyzed. If supports were modeled as fixed but in reality were constructed as pins or only partially fixed the correct amount of load may not be able to be transmitted to the support. This will cause a large issue with the load path of the roof. The initial design also neglected to analyze for second order effects resulting from deflections in the multiple long spans present in the roof structure. The deflections caused by the self-weight of the roof and resulting second order effects may have been enough to cause a failure even without all the other causes. There was also an alternative design used by the contractor that was never sent to the designer for analysis. This could have been done by the contractor to ensure the strict time schedule set by the owner was met. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">( <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hatzikiriakos, 2013).

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The erection of the steel space frame was done incorrectly resulting in improper geometry in the frame. This would have major consequences on the load path of the structure. If the members were not aligned properly they could not transmit all the load they were meant to into the adjacent members. This would result in increased stresses in individual members in which they were not designed to withstand. This caused buckling failures in the tubes along with connection failures in the frame. These small failures are most likely what was observed prior to the collapse that they were going to fix, but in reality were only a symptom of a much bigger issue of extreme negligence on the part of the contractor and workers. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As far of the construction goes it’s safe to say that everything that could have been done wrong was. With no quality control on the site possibly due to the accelerated schedule and a “just get it done” mentality many areas of the construction were done completely incorrectly. The improper construction of the roof started with an inadequate erecting plan with no one there to check the progress from the design firm. To add on to the inadequate erection plan the supports for the roof during the construction were insufficient for the loading they were put under. If that weren’t enough the welds used to construct the roof were wrong which leads back again to the lack of quality control on the job. Furthermore even if all of these construction issues had not happened the testing of the materials used in the frame did not meet the specifications during testing prior to construction which completely compromised the roof from the start. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(Chiang, 2010).

=Prevention= <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The truly sad part about this collapse is that it was entirely preventable. There was no crazy weather phenomenon or act of god that caused this it was simply a case of complete and total failure from design to construction. In the future countries such as this must enforce much stronger codes and standards of work for all buildings. (Ramli, 2012). In the design process something like a per-review should have been utilized for a structure this large and with such high risk to human life. As for the construction process it seems like there was no standards followed at all. With such giant failures from the contractor one must look at the owner as to how a company like this could be hired in the first place for a job this significant. These question again lead back to the notion that corruption of the owner in this case the government might have been at work do to how easily all of this could have been prevented.

=Similar Cases= <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Unfortunately this is not the only case were a total failure such as this had occurred. Building collapses such as this have been increasing in developing countries such as this. They have been found even more frequently in areas with questionable governments. Other countries where failures like this have been found are countries such as Singapore, Thailand, and a large number in Nigeria. One reason that this could be the case is the desire of structures at the level of first world countries but without the necessary industry professionals along with owners that are willing to cut corners to get to the result they want. Sadly in most of these cases the result is workers or occupants of the structures losing their life do to easily preventable failures. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(Olumuyiwa, 2013).

=Conclusion=

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">hroughout this case study the cause of the roof collapse was a failure on all levels of the project from the owner to the designer and to the contractor. Unrealistic expectations from the owner drove the failures of designer in designing a structure that was not able to hold the loads that it experienced once constructed. The pressure from the owner along with complete negligence by the contractor resulted in a completely improper construction process of the already incorrect design making matters even worse. Luckily the first failure didn’t harm anyone and the second only harmed five people, but if both of these roofs had fallen during a packed futball match in the stadium that holds close to 50,000 people this failure would be looked at very differently. With how easily this failure could have been prevented it really shows that drastic change in the building industry is needed in areas such as this were such complete failures are allowed to happen.

=Bibliography=

This paper focuses on buildings in Malaysia and making them better by the implementation of a Building Safety and Health Modelling system. The necessity for a system such as this is proven through examples of many collapses including the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ramli, Azuin, Zainal Abidin Akasah, Mohd Masirin, and Mohd Idrus (June 27, 2012). "Building Safety and Health Modelling Framework for Polytechnic Buildings in Malaysia." ** **University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia.**

This acritical details the initial report of the collapse.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">R.S.N. MURALI (June 3, 2009). “Workers escape in the nick of time as roof of year-old stadium collapses.” Star Media Group Berhad. ** [|**http://www.thestar.com.my/story/?file=%2f2009%2f6%2f3%2fnation%2f4038239**]**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> (October 7, 2015) **

<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In this paper different causes for decreased quality of construction in Malaysia are explored. A summary of the causes of the stadium collapse is also included.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Chiang, Jeffrey CL(December 2010). "Quality engineering design and construction in Malaysia: A fast disappearing and endangered commodity?" Jurutera. **

<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In this article the writer gives an update on the legal preceding going on in the case involving a man faking qualifications for checking the roof trusses.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cecilia Jeyanthi Victor (April 8 2014). “Consultant charged over T’ganu stadium roof collapse, case still pending.” The Ant Daily. **[|**http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Consultant-charged-over-T-ganu-stadium-roof-collapse-case-still-pending**]**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> (October 7, 2015) **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This paper looks at the ethical issues Malaysia is having with the procurement of projects. In this paper the stadium is cited as a primary example of this problem and provides a large amount of information on how this problem leads to poor building quality.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Abu Hassim, Aliza, Stephen L. Kajewski, and Bambang Trigunarsyah ( November 19, 2010). "Factors contributing to ethical issues in project procurement planning: a case study in Malaysia." In ** **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Proceedings of 2010 International Conference on Construction & Real Estate Management Volume 1, pp. 312-317. China Architecture and Building Press, 2010. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This article describes the second roof collapse of the stadium. The roof on the opposite side that did not collapse in 2009 was being dismantled when it also collapsed onto workers.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Joseph Kaos Jr. (April 17, 2013) “Stadium roof comes crashing down again, injuring five.” Star Media Group Berhad. **[|**http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/02/21/Stadium-roof-comes-crashing-down-again-injuring-five/**]**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> (October 7, 2015) **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In this article the current condition of the stadium is described as they were finally able to open a limited area of the stadium for games. This is the first time the stadium has been open since the 2009 collapse.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bernama (April 24, 2015). “Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium to host night match after almost 6 years.” Astro Awani Network Sdn. Bhd. **[|**http://english.astroawani.com/sports-news/sultan-mizan-zainal-abidin-stadium-host-night-match-after-almost-6-years-58430**]**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> (October 7, 2015) **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In this journal there is more of an overview of different building collapses in developing nations and the reasons behind them. It also delves into possible ways to reduce this in the future.
 * <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">MICHAEL, ALABI OLUMUYIWA, and AHMAD ROSDAN RAZAK (November 11, 2013). "The study of claims arising from building collapses: case studies from Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore and Thailand." //Civil and Environmental Research// 3, no. 11 (2013): 113-129. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This paper looks more in depth at the actual structural members that failed during the time of collapse. It also discusses lessons that can be learned from the failure.
 * <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hatzikiriakos (March 1, 2013). "Failure of Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin Statdium Roof." ** **//<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The University of British Columbi Engineering Failure Investigation Unit //****<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">. **