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Engineer behind Island’s troubled Danbrook One building stripped of licence, fined

Brian McClure must pay a total of $57,000 for failing to design the building to code
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The engineer behind Danbrook One, now known as RidgeView Place, in Langford has been fined and stripped of his licence to practice as a professional engineer in B.C. over safety concerns in the building’s original design. (Black Press Media file photo)

The engineer on a troubled Langford apartment building has been fined and stripped of his licence to practice professional engineering in B.C.

Brian McClure was the engineer for the Danbrook One apartment building project, which has since been renamed RidgeView Place by its new owners, and admitted to Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. over the course of their review he was unqualified for the job and failed to design the building to code.

As a result of a consent order dated May 9, McClure had his registration with the regulatory organization cancelled, was ordered to pay a fine of $25,000 – the maximum allowable under the legislation in place at the time – and agreed to pay $32,000 in legal costs to Engineers and Geoscientists BC.

READ MORE: Engineer on troubled Langford building unqualified: regulatory body

“We expect our registrants to apply the appropriate standards, codes and technical expertise to every project they work on,” said Heidi Yang, Engineers and Geoscientists BC’s CEO, in a news release. “The public deserves to have confidence that their homes are being designed to rigorous standards, and this case represents a serious breach of that trust. As a result, the individual involved can no longer practise professional engineering in British Columbia.”

The building has sat empty since just before Christmas 2019 after four months of near-full occupancy, due to what were deemed “dangerous” structural defects. Starting in March, new owners Centurion Property Associates Inc. advertised the building as having move-in dates of May 1.

Centurion said previously it was completing a “structural systems upgrade” to bring the 90-unit, 11-storey building up to code, and to meet the requirements for the City of Langford to issue an occupancy permit once again.

In the May 9 consent order, McClure admitted that he “demonstrated unprofessional conduct; in particular, he admitted that the structural design drawings for Danbrook One were deficient, that certain aspects of the seismic design and gravity load resisting system did not comply with the building code, and that the existence of significant defects identified in the structural design drawings demonstrated incompetence,” according to the regulatory body.

McClure also admitted he failed to undertake an adequate design process, did not perform a sufficient number of field reviews or properly document those reviews, and failed to take adequate steps to address serious concerns about the building’s design that were brought to his attention during construction.

READ MORE: ‘Structural systems upgrade’ nearing completion on Langford highrise, owner says


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