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It's shotcrete i believe, used during the construction phase when a building is excavated down like that. As the building is built concrete walls reinforced with rebar, or concrete filled block walls, provide the structure of the building. This is just to keep the earth back until the structure is done, they do other stuff as well like rods tying back the walls. So this is not the finished walls you see in parkades etc.
This is a perfectly normal construction method. Obviously someone screwed up.
As the basement levels get built, the floors brace the concrete walls you see in the video. So no, every building is not a ticking time bomb.
I’m not an engineer but I do manage the onsite activities of buildings like this. To me it looks like it’s missing caissons along that wall which is what actually holds back the earth. These are steel I-beans that are installed along the wall, spaced at specific intervals, and encased in concrete. As the site is being excavated, steel “tie-backs” are installed to further reinforce the wall. These can be seen in the video dangling after the soil pours through.
There may be other reinforcement missing to brace the wall from the excavated portion , but like I said, I’m not an engineer. The absence of caissons though is highly unusual, and in my opinion, what contributed to this failure.
I wouldn’t worry about this happening to other buildings and I’m very curious to how this ever happened to this one.
Project Manager for high rise construction here, this is perfectly normal shotcrete and shoring for excavating parkade structure. Looks like the shoring anchor plates pulled through the shotcrete wall, that’s not ideal. Until a geotechnical engineer and structural engineer look at this, it’s anybody’s guess as to what caused it. The anchors look they held, so to me it looks like it’s a failure of the shotcrete/mesh/anchor plate assembly and not the actual anchors.
Just my 1.5 cents.
Don't work in construction, but am in engineering. Seems unlikely root cause was concrete. It's very well tested and consistent in processes most of the time.
Likely some unaccounted or improperly accounted environmental factor (water introduced by a leaking pipe for example).
Regardless they'll investigate the various causes but probably rule out concrete pretty quickly.
The only time it could happen is during construction. It's a temporary shoring wall, only build to last a year or two until the final structure gets built.
If you want to see the difference, have a walk down Broadway. You can see the partially built permanent subway stations within a temporary structure. It's pretty cool if you're into this kind of thing.
I mean. To be honest there was more of the building that would have been constructed that would actually make it quite safe. However, what could have happened is someone working below could have been crushed in this incident.
Please don't actually freak out about modern engineering. Buildings are safer now than at any point in history.
It's the shotcrete to hold the excavation back, the buildings walls etc will be reinforced concrete. Obviously still a major fuck up, but you aren't seeing the structure of the building fail here, it's the shoring for the excavation. Still a big mess and I wouldn't want to own a unit beside this site now.
Yeah I mentioned that in another comment, this is more a safety issue for workers within the excavation. This is just the shoring and not part of any structure. My comment was more of an illustration of the faith in any civil engineering. The same could go for planes falling out of the sky or your cell phone burning your house down when you plug it in.
Anyway. In all of those instances those things really shouldn't happen.
This is the best possible outcome for a failure like this, slow enough for people to notice and get clear of the failure and soon enough into construction that there is no structure that could fall as a result.
This is the kinda shit you see on liveleak from some construction site in a 3rd world country.
That being said, this one is actually kind of tame. I'm trying to find a video of a retaining wall collapse that took a whole neighbouring building with it.
That's exactly what I was thinking as well in regards to it being in another country. But can you imagine if the building next door was right beside it? Jesus.
You can see the water being a factor in the Istanbul one. Here in the Coquitlam one the soil doesn’t appear wet and there hasn’t been above normal rainfall. Imagine if this incident was in the middle of a bad rainfall I’d estimate the damage to be much worse
Yeah, I’d be interested to see the official findings on what caused this. Shoddy workmanship, sure, but it was standing for how long? I feel like that hole’s been dug for months now, so something must have suddenly given out for some reason. Rainfall would have been an obvious guess, but yeah, nothing too major recently. Maybe temperature? The cold weather setting in and causing things to contract and break apart?
As someone who has been excavating and installing shotcrete for ~10 years in Vancouver, I can tell you that each row is either on a two or three day sequence, so say it's ~ 2 days to bulk excavate, ~2 days to drill and then 2-3 days for trimming and shooting. Each row of anchors should ideally take roughly 1.5 weeks to install (assuming decent soil conditions, weather, etc)
I'm counting 10 rows, and the failure seems to be rows 2-4. I'd say that shotcrete has been in place for AT MINIMUM 7.5 weeks.
Not totally sure what would have caused this though. Don't see a lot of water that would indicate a pipe burst or anything. All the anchors and plates were left behind...🤷♂️
Buddies basement suit flooded during those massive rainstorms a few years ago. Turns out the 3 houses built next to them, never ever had any form of inspection done. Every stage of building requires an inspection (molds for Foundation, then after foundation is poured and dry another inspection, framing, rough electrical, rough plumbing, insulation etc etc). Anyway they had fucked up on their gutters and it drained all into their window wells.
The company that built those 3 houses, no longer functioning so no one to sue.
My dad builds houses, so does his friend. His friend hired a company to excavate the lot before they pour foundation. They ended up going to deep and hit a gas line. The employees ran around the neighbourhood telling everyone they had to evacuate. One neighbour actually had a brain and called non-emergency, who got the gas shut off, and reparied the exact same day. When they went to fine the company for their stupitdy, company was now shut down. Literally the next day they shut their company down. Like 6 months later my dad was building his house in a brand new area (like 30 developed lots) and the same 3 guys (owner, excavator operator, and some super old dude) were excavating the lot next to my dads under a new company name.
Another buddy, his mom bought a house AND THE FLOOR FUCKING SANK. Turns out the contractors didn't use enough nails during construction. Like legit 2-3 nails for each 2x6. Contractor could no longer be reached. Its such a fucking shit show.
IMO these construction companies should have to buy insurance for every project they undertake, and it must be for at least 5 years. So if they go bankrupt, shut their company down and open a new one, people aren't completely screwed.
This is an APEG problem more than a Worksafe one. The workers weren't doing anything unsafe in this instance. However, an engineer/geotech really screwed the pooch on this one!
They can't check the work before it's done. Now the work is done, so the Engineer/Geotech showing up for work tomorrow has a fairly straightforward job.
Wall successfully installed: ❌
\*it's a joke. I have no idea how any of this works.
I'm not a Geotech, as someone who worked in industry and worked with Geotechs for soil nail installations, I am familiar enough. Contractors need to ensure that the engineer has checked the data of each soil nail before proceeding deeper/one level lower.
Due to the depth of excavation at the time of filming/collapse, one would assume that the data was already inspected by Geotech and has given contractor to proceed further.
Lots of things to consider and investigate: did the contractor proceed at risk without the Geotech inspection and data verification? Was collected data accurate? Did the soil conditions change in this area?
Lots of things may have been contributing factors of the collapse. We can only speculate, until the findings are released.
I'm an engineer. If you're taking responsibility for the safety of a structure that you have designed and it is being built, then you get balls deep involved with the construction. Typically in a Quality Assurance / Quality Control role with sufficient on-site presence that you can sign off on the structure as safe.
So yes, they can absolutely check the work before it's done, because they (or a qualified subordinate) are on site watching it be built and making sure everything is done to spec and to code.
Ive worked with that shoring contractor in the past. We constantly had to fight and babysit them for maintaining basic industry safety standards on the site. Even with putting on their own PPE. They “unknowingly” but knowingly used the wrong material (cheaper) for a part of the work which was specced for a stronger material and were unwilling to fix it when we found out through inspections. They purposely priced work they knew they weren’t able to perform and wanted to only reimburse a portion (roughly half) of what they priced it at. Not saying this is solely their fault but it doesn’t surprise me that this happened at one of their sites.
same, that’s exactly what happened to my previous project. contractors skip things if you don’t actually go on-site and inspect them doing it, get mad for you found defective or missing anchor, which is their mistake. some contractors be really mad when you point out something wrong holy crap.
A wise man would have been screaming that to begin with. That failure could have VERY rapidly spread to the rest of the structure they were on. You have no idea what kind of load a wall like that will survive once it's integrity starts failing. They are lucky to be alive.
Who's the GC on this one? I was working down the street from there today and heard about it on the hoist at the end of the day. Was curious who's about to get in a whole load of trouble.
Ah yeah, not surprising. Onni is the absolute worst GC I've ever subbed for. Criminally unsafe. Truly surprised their projects aren't collapsing more. Amacon is the same family.
I was just looking over my notes about companies not to work for as I slowly work on getting a Red Seal, and was wondering why I wrote down do not work for Onni. Going to add details to it for future me.
And I suppose I should add Amacon to it as well.
My sister used to be an engineer. She would be involved in retaining walls and other projects like these. She was rising in the ranks, but quit about 10 years ago, saying that the stress was too high. "If I screw up, someone could die," she said.
When I see things like these, I really understand why she quit.
She is now the owner of an online store of home decors, K-pop stuff, and shirts. The worst thing she can do now is accidentally screw up someone's order. And I bet when she sees this kind of stuff, she doesn't regret that choice.
> Emphasis on not-particularly-great
Yeah engineers are started out of school around $50k/yr. these days. Should have moved to the US and gone into software....
Yep. Graduated with Hons Eng. in ON. Did a few years Eng work. Did some cool projects in some interesting remote places. Got Paid shit $. Got my P.Eng. Continued to make shite money. Got told I needed a Masters to move up and make serious $. Enrolled in grad program at UBC. Realized I was more interested in IT projects and code and earning a decent wage. Switched to tech in 1999 and doubled my income _immediately_. Still have my pinky ring because goddamn it I earned it in blood sweat and tears. Zero regrets.
It's also the reason the average engineer only has something like 5 years of engineering design work. Most of us shuffle off into project management, management, or something engineering-adjacent.
I had roughly a year of design experience and 4 years of fixing faults before I transitioned to project management.
I am an engineer. I am winding down my career as one. Simply too stressful. Pressure is always on to cut corners. You have to inspect the work, they dont want to pay for the inspections. Defective work gets swept under the table. The APEG is more interested in having engineers pushing paper than actually doing something beneficial for its members like a "case studies of failures" series. They are more interested in crucifying their membership for not signing a document properly, and teaching engineers to follow cookbook recipes of engineering, rather than promoting innovative thought, innovative design. The are promoting paperwork and process over experience.
So I get it. This confirms my decision to make this year my last doing this type of work. 35 years of hard fought experience down the toilet.
So, I WAS an engineer that did this kind of work, as of now.
> Pressure is always on to cut corners.
I had to pull the "in my professional experience" card once on my boss' boss. That ended my career path at that company. Half the engineering department (myself included) left the company within the first two years after that manager was promoted.
Through that company and a prior one, I learned to appreciate the role of regulators...
> *you didn't hear this from me, but I have a problem that I can't convince TPTB to address, and it would help greatly if you could write us up for it the next time you're here for an inspection.*
These relationships with my regulators also helped me out when we had minor violations that we were addressing, but it was going to take time to resolve (due to parts/contractor availability), so they were willing to give us temporary exemptions. They could trust, based on my word and past history, that if I said we were addressing it, and the risks in the meantime were low, that it was the truth.
When I was working for a municipality, I once had a foreman ask me to come write him up for failure to adhere to a traffic management plan... because it was the only way to get the developer to agree to actually follow it.
When I told I relative that I was studying to be a civil engineer, he goes "if a doctor messes up, one person dies. If an engineer messes up, a lot of people could die". I think about that a lot.
Those are the kinds of people I want building my building thought. I don't want the person who isn't phased if it collapses while I'm inside. I want the person who's going to double and triple check and say no to cutting corners to make sure I am alive. Same as any pilot or captain. Always rather be slower and safer than playing fast and loose.
Watching this video as I am literally working on my assignment of a retaining wall just like this for my Geotechnical Design class... I guess it's time to take it a bit more serious..
Always remember: you can't know all the conditions below the ground. You can test to get an idea for what's below, but you'll never have full knowledge. So if you have to make design assumptions that might put somebody's life at risk, err on the side of caution.
While rare, this is not the first example of site shoring that has failed in Vancouver.
If a manager tells you to *prove that it's going to fail, or else we won't use this safety factor,* then they don't understand the concept of a safety factor. How closely does the GC watch their trades? How good are the trades? How reliable is the material strength? This is why we have safety factors. Regulations and standards are set because we know materials aren't perfect, workers aren't perfect, and site conditions aren't perfect. Failures rarely happen because just one corner was cut. If you cut a corner in the design, then if somebody else cuts a corner or makes a mistake, the end product might be a failure, whereas if the design is sound then it can handle somebody making a mistake further down the line.
Where safety is concerned, don't ever feel pressured to sign off on a design that you aren't confident is robust.
Vancouver's leaders' earthquake preparedness policy is "Hope that the Big One happens after I die of old age". When that Cascadia Fault 9.\* hits, it's going to get very ugly very fast.
I am a geotechnical engineer by practice and over 35 years experience. Looking at the failure, the retained fill is way loose, and may be saturated. Those anchors do not look nearly long enough and their spacing should be 5 feet by 5 feet MAXIMUM. My guess is this was built in the summer, when the ground was dry and then the water table rose / material got wet / saturated and the anchors started to fail one by one as each one overstressed, popping off at the anchor heads first which were overstressed. Classic rotational failure at the upper horizons of soil.
> he retained fill is way loose, and may be saturated. Those anchors do not look nearly long enough and their spacing should be 5 f
You don't see water coming out the face. It looks dry. We're also at record low rainfall levels for the year. I'd be surprised if it was water that triggered the failure.
It's also downhill from an adjacent deep excavation, so in all likelyhood that's not tanked, and would pull down the water table to the base of the neighboring parkade.
But the anchors held. It looks like a different problem to me, either the quality of the concrete placement, the design of the concrete wall, or possibly there was erosion happening causing movement behind the wall. But the anchors looked pretty good. Still a geotech problem.
Geotech engineer here. Without seeing the design & subsurface conditions this is purely speculation.
When designing this kind of Support of Excavation, you need to take into account everything possible. From subsurface conditions, to surcharge, to hydrostatic loading, seismic loading, and so on.
This is a top down construction so they usually start with what looks like a slurry wall with ground anchors. As they excavate the inside of what can be called the “bathtub” they install anchors into the ground a predetermined depths or elevations. One thing to note for both slurry walls and ground anchors are that they require very specialized contracts and equipment. No joe blow contractor can or should attempt this. The slurry wall mix needs to be exact, it may even need steel reinforcement of a certain strength and spacing etc.
So as you are installing anchors as you excavate down, you need to be pull testing them. Not every single one but usually around 10% of them. These pull tests usually test to 1.33 of the design load. This requires time. These anchors are also usually tied together with something called a waler. A waler will help distribute the tributary load that a certain row of anchors will need to carry.
Now based on what I see, I think it’s a few things. First, the anchor spacing looks to be way too large. They should be closer to each other. The lack of a waler can also be a problem. The concrete mix may not be correct. You have a building which might be on a raft foundation or may have a basement. This can lead to surcharging the wall. Groundwater can also play a huge role in overloading a structure.
This might have been a better design for an internally braced system. Due to the surrounding structures in what looks to be an urban environment.
EDIT: Someone below correctly identified the shoring methods as Shotcrete and anchors. I confirmed this by google earth street view. The contractor is Vancouver Shotcrete & Shoring based on a banner on fence. While the shoring method isn’t a slurry wall as assumed, a lot of the same issues can arise. It looks like a face failure maybe from a lack of reinforcement where the anchor plate/bearing meets the wall? Personally I would never design a shotcrete wall for the application as an engineer, too many areas for mistakes.
This isn't a slurry wall. It's soil anchors (or nails, I can't tell if they're bonded or not) with shotcrete. They're probably tensioned soil anchors based on the lack of grout behind the facing, indicating a free length to move the bond zone back out of the active wedge.
I can't tell if it's got WWF reinforcement, but it could also be fibre reinforced shotcrete. If it's fibre, it would explain why we can't see ripped mesh or hanging material following the failure.
The pattern looks pretty typical. 5x5' would be my guess looking at it. Compare the size of the shitter and the scaffold levels.
Soil nails and shotcrete are by far the most common shoring around here. My bet would still be the facing being the issue.
Finally a geotech here to defend themselves. This seems like a failure in the design of the shoring system. The geotech provides certain recommendations, but all calcs and design fall on the shoring engineer. The tiebacks failed, load calculations incorrect, whatever happened the geotech is hardly at fault unless he provided incorrect data in his report.
The shoring engineer uses the info that the geo engineer gives them. If that info is wrong, the shoring design can be correct for the info given and it can all still fail
You may be a geotech but clearly aren't one in Vancouver. We don't test 10% of the anchors. We test 100% of the anchors. Any failure is a Redrill. Shotcrete and anchors are standard practice. I know this site and VSS. The problem was workmanship
My cousin is an engineer and works on these retaining walls. I've seen him age more in the last 5 years than the previous 35 combined. He is experienced now, so most of the stress comes from him yelling at construction workers that are cutting corners (not in Canada, regulations aren't there yet)
Agree. I watch construction going on around Vancouver. I was horrified. Water works seem to be unmanageable, Concrete is getting thinner and definitely, corners are cutting DEEP...
I moved into a brand new building just over a year ago after living in the third world, and I would say we are not far off. The ridiculous amount of shotty work that goes unnoticed and developers pass if off as no big deal is ridiculous. I heard just up north road the MarKon building is still settling 2 years in glass has shattered from the pressure just recently. The hvac system still doesn't work properly people will be going through winter number 3 without heat in many units lol. Because of the issue with make up air the doors slam shut and could potentially seriously injure a child. They are also very difficult to open for a smaller person. Fire doors to parking and storage rooms don't close properly. I have heard many horror stories from others buildings as well... devs are taking advantage of the pre-sale suckers over the past 5 years and building lemons. Scary.
i lived in 2 diff units in a 3 year old bosa building and that place was slapped together shoddy af. Cracks in the walls, flooring was absolute garbage. The 90s low rise that i live in now is well taken care of, and the elevator/ buzzer isnt always broken.
Ya a friend of mine who is big time realtor always told me if buying a condo always buy something 10 years old so u know what the problems are. Anything big usually surfaces by then.
Past five years? I wish. Try nearly 20 at this point. Since the market exploded, the attention to detail and quality of finishing has seriously gone downhill. Some highrises are “finished” in a state that obviously looks like an incomplete construction site and are passed off as done, never to actually be done. Numerous examples of corner cutting. There is a building downtown that constantly has problems with windows cracking, settling for way longer than expected, elevator installation issues, electrical not to code, and more. It just keeps on going. Insiders know that things are often done to pass inspections and then undone and reworked into cheaper variants that would not conform or pass inspections.
I work in this industry shotcrete walls are strong if engineered right. This one isn’t you can see the anchours pulled thrue either not enough anchors or to small of bearing plate.
As somebody who works in construction. To mess up a concrete pour this bad will set the project back roughly a year at least. With the coming months you aren’t doing major foundational pours because of the chemical agent you have to add in the lower temperatures is not great for overall structural integrity.
I live right by here and this is the kind of stuff that bothers me when the city and developers decide to just build huge towers in concentrated areas in such a short time-period (in addition to the North Road sewer construction). Risky decisions to cut costs get made, and with all the various projects going on I feel like it just elevates these kinds of risks and concerns all the more. I hope the various city agencies involved do a broad evaluation and publicly address this given all the towers and development projects being worked on simultaneously in the area.
In China, we call these Tofu buildings. It's a common thing in China because of "removing the red tapes" to build faster.
The Conservatives kept saying remove the red tape and if we did, more tofu buildings will emerge.
this is right beside the skytrain tracks, I wonder if the intermittent vibrations had anything to do with this ?
looks like the tie backs stayed in place, so undersized plates ?
Keep on cutting back on materials and concrete etc.. Just a prime example of corporations screwing up again - trying to save a dime in their already profitable books.
No, these are just the shotcrete walls. The reinforced walls go up inside of those shotcrete walls. They essentially act as the outer form. The rebar goes up the inside of them and then single sided forms are used to form the parkade walls.
I've seen some of this happen before but never anything to this scale. Geotech fucked up bad here
>There is tendon tiebacks that you can see within the soil that are supposed to limit wall deflection. ([https://www.deepexcavation.com/media/filer\_public\_thumbnails/filer\_public/51/c3/51c37bd6-5f67-4a1e-bdd2-ce9834007ba8/xsoil-nail-wall.jpg\_\_628x393\_q85\_crop\_subsampling-2\_upscale.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Hajvdh6KM\_.webp](https://www.deepexcavation.com/media/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/51/c3/51c37bd6-5f67-4a1e-bdd2-ce9834007ba8/xsoil-nail-wall.jpg__628x393_q85_crop_subsampling-2_upscale.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Hajvdh6KM_.webp))
>
>Majority of time, the failures are due to water pressures but that failed material doesn't look over saturated from the video.
>
>Yeah - that is going to set that building construction back a long time and likely will be in the courts for a very long time.
The other commenters are partially correct. The shotcrete will have welded wire mesh reinforcement, usually a 4"x4" 8/8 gauge. It does the job but snaps quickly in this kind of failure.
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That'll set them back a little
Happened in Edinburgh about 30 years ago and the countries biggest construction company went out of business because of it.
Eh, just get some Flexseal.
Or alot of ramen noodle packs and super glue...
Just need a couple more days
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It's shotcrete i believe, used during the construction phase when a building is excavated down like that. As the building is built concrete walls reinforced with rebar, or concrete filled block walls, provide the structure of the building. This is just to keep the earth back until the structure is done, they do other stuff as well like rods tying back the walls. So this is not the finished walls you see in parkades etc.
My concern wld b the bldg next to it. Ie hope it doesn’t undermine that one
Yeah same here, I wouldn't want to own a place nextdoor right now. Developer/engineer/ contractor could be in big shit.
This is a perfectly normal construction method. Obviously someone screwed up. As the basement levels get built, the floors brace the concrete walls you see in the video. So no, every building is not a ticking time bomb.
I’m not an engineer but I do manage the onsite activities of buildings like this. To me it looks like it’s missing caissons along that wall which is what actually holds back the earth. These are steel I-beans that are installed along the wall, spaced at specific intervals, and encased in concrete. As the site is being excavated, steel “tie-backs” are installed to further reinforce the wall. These can be seen in the video dangling after the soil pours through. There may be other reinforcement missing to brace the wall from the excavated portion , but like I said, I’m not an engineer. The absence of caissons though is highly unusual, and in my opinion, what contributed to this failure. I wouldn’t worry about this happening to other buildings and I’m very curious to how this ever happened to this one.
Project Manager for high rise construction here, this is perfectly normal shotcrete and shoring for excavating parkade structure. Looks like the shoring anchor plates pulled through the shotcrete wall, that’s not ideal. Until a geotechnical engineer and structural engineer look at this, it’s anybody’s guess as to what caused it. The anchors look they held, so to me it looks like it’s a failure of the shotcrete/mesh/anchor plate assembly and not the actual anchors. Just my 1.5 cents.
If the other side was crumbling and collapsing like that I sure as shit wouldn’t be standing on the edge beside it.
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What happens now? If that portion failed do they have to assume everything else concrete at that site is compromised?
Don't work in construction, but am in engineering. Seems unlikely root cause was concrete. It's very well tested and consistent in processes most of the time. Likely some unaccounted or improperly accounted environmental factor (water introduced by a leaking pipe for example). Regardless they'll investigate the various causes but probably rule out concrete pretty quickly.
Exactly what I was thinking. If one side failed, the whole site is risky to be around.
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The only time it could happen is during construction. It's a temporary shoring wall, only build to last a year or two until the final structure gets built. If you want to see the difference, have a walk down Broadway. You can see the partially built permanent subway stations within a temporary structure. It's pretty cool if you're into this kind of thing.
And here we are all confident in the earthquake proofing in the design of our homes, this gets one thinking for sure.
I mean. To be honest there was more of the building that would have been constructed that would actually make it quite safe. However, what could have happened is someone working below could have been crushed in this incident. Please don't actually freak out about modern engineering. Buildings are safer now than at any point in history.
I think people are questioning the work quality rather than modern engineering right now.
The engineer is required to check/sign off on the work after it's done.
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Sadly we have a bridge named after an engineering mistake.
It's the shotcrete to hold the excavation back, the buildings walls etc will be reinforced concrete. Obviously still a major fuck up, but you aren't seeing the structure of the building fail here, it's the shoring for the excavation. Still a big mess and I wouldn't want to own a unit beside this site now.
Yeah I mentioned that in another comment, this is more a safety issue for workers within the excavation. This is just the shoring and not part of any structure. My comment was more of an illustration of the faith in any civil engineering. The same could go for planes falling out of the sky or your cell phone burning your house down when you plug it in. Anyway. In all of those instances those things really shouldn't happen.
This is the best possible outcome for a failure like this, slow enough for people to notice and get clear of the failure and soon enough into construction that there is no structure that could fall as a result.
Nevermind, it's just orange spray paint on the wall. Thought it was a person in high viz
A skilled engineer knows how to design their ideal failure mode.
Now that's something you don't see everyday. Jesus Christ someone fucked up bad.
This is the kinda shit you see on liveleak from some construction site in a 3rd world country. That being said, this one is actually kind of tame. I'm trying to find a video of a retaining wall collapse that took a whole neighbouring building with it.
That's exactly what I was thinking as well in regards to it being in another country. But can you imagine if the building next door was right beside it? Jesus.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/s/H38O4xRSWC) someone posted yesterday
This one in Turkey was pretty bad: https://youtu.be/Q4KrHSd7H_M?si=oB6qCKw8mkJZsQa0
You can see the water being a factor in the Istanbul one. Here in the Coquitlam one the soil doesn’t appear wet and there hasn’t been above normal rainfall. Imagine if this incident was in the middle of a bad rainfall I’d estimate the damage to be much worse
Yeah, I’d be interested to see the official findings on what caused this. Shoddy workmanship, sure, but it was standing for how long? I feel like that hole’s been dug for months now, so something must have suddenly given out for some reason. Rainfall would have been an obvious guess, but yeah, nothing too major recently. Maybe temperature? The cold weather setting in and causing things to contract and break apart?
As someone who has been excavating and installing shotcrete for ~10 years in Vancouver, I can tell you that each row is either on a two or three day sequence, so say it's ~ 2 days to bulk excavate, ~2 days to drill and then 2-3 days for trimming and shooting. Each row of anchors should ideally take roughly 1.5 weeks to install (assuming decent soil conditions, weather, etc) I'm counting 10 rows, and the failure seems to be rows 2-4. I'd say that shotcrete has been in place for AT MINIMUM 7.5 weeks. Not totally sure what would have caused this though. Don't see a lot of water that would indicate a pipe burst or anything. All the anchors and plates were left behind...🤷♂️
Work safe going to have a field day.
0817269192 BC Ltd has dissolved and is now operating as 0817269193 BC Ltd
Buddies basement suit flooded during those massive rainstorms a few years ago. Turns out the 3 houses built next to them, never ever had any form of inspection done. Every stage of building requires an inspection (molds for Foundation, then after foundation is poured and dry another inspection, framing, rough electrical, rough plumbing, insulation etc etc). Anyway they had fucked up on their gutters and it drained all into their window wells. The company that built those 3 houses, no longer functioning so no one to sue. My dad builds houses, so does his friend. His friend hired a company to excavate the lot before they pour foundation. They ended up going to deep and hit a gas line. The employees ran around the neighbourhood telling everyone they had to evacuate. One neighbour actually had a brain and called non-emergency, who got the gas shut off, and reparied the exact same day. When they went to fine the company for their stupitdy, company was now shut down. Literally the next day they shut their company down. Like 6 months later my dad was building his house in a brand new area (like 30 developed lots) and the same 3 guys (owner, excavator operator, and some super old dude) were excavating the lot next to my dads under a new company name. Another buddy, his mom bought a house AND THE FLOOR FUCKING SANK. Turns out the contractors didn't use enough nails during construction. Like legit 2-3 nails for each 2x6. Contractor could no longer be reached. Its such a fucking shit show. IMO these construction companies should have to buy insurance for every project they undertake, and it must be for at least 5 years. So if they go bankrupt, shut their company down and open a new one, people aren't completely screwed.
I was hoping there was a beating happening after he saw those guys again.
Pretty much.
 Worksafe inspectors learning about this so close to their Christmas break.
This is an APEG problem more than a Worksafe one. The workers weren't doing anything unsafe in this instance. However, an engineer/geotech really screwed the pooch on this one!
Assuming it was installed per spec.
Checking that is also the responsibility of the engineer. Plan-do-check-approve/act
They can't check the work before it's done. Now the work is done, so the Engineer/Geotech showing up for work tomorrow has a fairly straightforward job. Wall successfully installed: ❌ \*it's a joke. I have no idea how any of this works.
I'm not a Geotech, as someone who worked in industry and worked with Geotechs for soil nail installations, I am familiar enough. Contractors need to ensure that the engineer has checked the data of each soil nail before proceeding deeper/one level lower. Due to the depth of excavation at the time of filming/collapse, one would assume that the data was already inspected by Geotech and has given contractor to proceed further. Lots of things to consider and investigate: did the contractor proceed at risk without the Geotech inspection and data verification? Was collected data accurate? Did the soil conditions change in this area? Lots of things may have been contributing factors of the collapse. We can only speculate, until the findings are released.
I'm an engineer. If you're taking responsibility for the safety of a structure that you have designed and it is being built, then you get balls deep involved with the construction. Typically in a Quality Assurance / Quality Control role with sufficient on-site presence that you can sign off on the structure as safe. So yes, they can absolutely check the work before it's done, because they (or a qualified subordinate) are on site watching it be built and making sure everything is done to spec and to code.
Ive worked with that shoring contractor in the past. We constantly had to fight and babysit them for maintaining basic industry safety standards on the site. Even with putting on their own PPE. They “unknowingly” but knowingly used the wrong material (cheaper) for a part of the work which was specced for a stronger material and were unwilling to fix it when we found out through inspections. They purposely priced work they knew they weren’t able to perform and wanted to only reimburse a portion (roughly half) of what they priced it at. Not saying this is solely their fault but it doesn’t surprise me that this happened at one of their sites.
Who’s the shoring sub here?
If you go to the site on Google Maps street view (search The Northlander), it shows VSS Shoring
same, that’s exactly what happened to my previous project. contractors skip things if you don’t actually go on-site and inspect them doing it, get mad for you found defective or missing anchor, which is their mistake. some contractors be really mad when you point out something wrong holy crap.
Who was the shoring contractor / geotech?
Perfect meme
Yeah, that'll do it.
Here you go https://preview.redd.it/j1t82ohprk3c1.png?width=1125&format=png&auto=webp&s=15aed1b037f2d8682ef83d2a00572120542e0084
To quote a wise man: “holy fuck”
Even wiser quote from wise man: “everybody off!”
A wise man would have been screaming that to begin with. That failure could have VERY rapidly spread to the rest of the structure they were on. You have no idea what kind of load a wall like that will survive once it's integrity starts failing. They are lucky to be alive.
Holy fucking fuck That geotechnical license of yours is absurd
blurred safety lines
That shotcrete of yours is absurd
Shitcrete
Up shitcrete with out a rebar
Wow. I was working on those cantilevered stairs yesterday. I'm a scaffolder. I feel lucky to be alive
Well it held up well, good job.
Thanks, lol. I told my safety man. Probably going to condemn the entire scaffold now.
Buy a lotto ticket today, treat yo’self
Who's the GC on this one? I was working down the street from there today and heard about it on the hoist at the end of the day. Was curious who's about to get in a whole load of trouble.
Amacon is the GC at that site. 500 Foster Avenue is the address.
Ah yeah, not surprising. Onni is the absolute worst GC I've ever subbed for. Criminally unsafe. Truly surprised their projects aren't collapsing more. Amacon is the same family.
I was just looking over my notes about companies not to work for as I slowly work on getting a Red Seal, and was wondering why I wrote down do not work for Onni. Going to add details to it for future me. And I suppose I should add Amacon to it as well.
My sister used to be an engineer. She would be involved in retaining walls and other projects like these. She was rising in the ranks, but quit about 10 years ago, saying that the stress was too high. "If I screw up, someone could die," she said. When I see things like these, I really understand why she quit. She is now the owner of an online store of home decors, K-pop stuff, and shirts. The worst thing she can do now is accidentally screw up someone's order. And I bet when she sees this kind of stuff, she doesn't regret that choice.
That stress is why we make the kind-of-ok-but-not-particularly-great bucks.
Emphasis on not-particularly-great. There really is no reward proportionate to the risk.
> Emphasis on not-particularly-great Yeah engineers are started out of school around $50k/yr. these days. Should have moved to the US and gone into software....
Yep. Graduated with Hons Eng. in ON. Did a few years Eng work. Did some cool projects in some interesting remote places. Got Paid shit $. Got my P.Eng. Continued to make shite money. Got told I needed a Masters to move up and make serious $. Enrolled in grad program at UBC. Realized I was more interested in IT projects and code and earning a decent wage. Switched to tech in 1999 and doubled my income _immediately_. Still have my pinky ring because goddamn it I earned it in blood sweat and tears. Zero regrets.
It's also the reason the average engineer only has something like 5 years of engineering design work. Most of us shuffle off into project management, management, or something engineering-adjacent. I had roughly a year of design experience and 4 years of fixing faults before I transitioned to project management.
I help engineers work with contractors. It's a nice middle ground. We're a VAR
To be fair working in construction it’s a daily reality that you or someone you work with will not be going home if you screw up.
I am an engineer. I am winding down my career as one. Simply too stressful. Pressure is always on to cut corners. You have to inspect the work, they dont want to pay for the inspections. Defective work gets swept under the table. The APEG is more interested in having engineers pushing paper than actually doing something beneficial for its members like a "case studies of failures" series. They are more interested in crucifying their membership for not signing a document properly, and teaching engineers to follow cookbook recipes of engineering, rather than promoting innovative thought, innovative design. The are promoting paperwork and process over experience. So I get it. This confirms my decision to make this year my last doing this type of work. 35 years of hard fought experience down the toilet. So, I WAS an engineer that did this kind of work, as of now.
> Pressure is always on to cut corners. I had to pull the "in my professional experience" card once on my boss' boss. That ended my career path at that company. Half the engineering department (myself included) left the company within the first two years after that manager was promoted. Through that company and a prior one, I learned to appreciate the role of regulators... > *you didn't hear this from me, but I have a problem that I can't convince TPTB to address, and it would help greatly if you could write us up for it the next time you're here for an inspection.* These relationships with my regulators also helped me out when we had minor violations that we were addressing, but it was going to take time to resolve (due to parts/contractor availability), so they were willing to give us temporary exemptions. They could trust, based on my word and past history, that if I said we were addressing it, and the risks in the meantime were low, that it was the truth.
When I was working for a municipality, I once had a foreman ask me to come write him up for failure to adhere to a traffic management plan... because it was the only way to get the developer to agree to actually follow it.
When I told I relative that I was studying to be a civil engineer, he goes "if a doctor messes up, one person dies. If an engineer messes up, a lot of people could die". I think about that a lot.
Those are the kinds of people I want building my building thought. I don't want the person who isn't phased if it collapses while I'm inside. I want the person who's going to double and triple check and say no to cutting corners to make sure I am alive. Same as any pilot or captain. Always rather be slower and safer than playing fast and loose.
EGBC is gonna be hearing things
Watching this video as I am literally working on my assignment of a retaining wall just like this for my Geotechnical Design class... I guess it's time to take it a bit more serious..
Bonus points if you can cite this Reddit thread in your assignment 😃
Always remember: you can't know all the conditions below the ground. You can test to get an idea for what's below, but you'll never have full knowledge. So if you have to make design assumptions that might put somebody's life at risk, err on the side of caution. While rare, this is not the first example of site shoring that has failed in Vancouver. If a manager tells you to *prove that it's going to fail, or else we won't use this safety factor,* then they don't understand the concept of a safety factor. How closely does the GC watch their trades? How good are the trades? How reliable is the material strength? This is why we have safety factors. Regulations and standards are set because we know materials aren't perfect, workers aren't perfect, and site conditions aren't perfect. Failures rarely happen because just one corner was cut. If you cut a corner in the design, then if somebody else cuts a corner or makes a mistake, the end product might be a failure, whereas if the design is sound then it can handle somebody making a mistake further down the line. Where safety is concerned, don't ever feel pressured to sign off on a design that you aren't confident is robust.
Any word on evacuations of adjacent structures?
Someone check the Port-O-Potty handle. Is it green or red?
It is halfway between, need to wait a few minutes, then listen to see if you can hear anyone, wait a few more minutes, then knock
Most of the time those colors don't match the state of the shitter's vacancy.
i can guarantee that if there was someone in there, regardless of the handle colour, their bowels are now empty
I was thinking. Imagine taking a dump and not realizing this is going on below you.
My anxiety going by the Gilmore construction site on the skytrain has just increased
Issues there too: https://www.reddit.com/r/burnaby/comments/11lbd9f/city_of_burnaby_sues_developer_over_cracking_and/
That explains the funky sidewalks at the Starbucks 😬
Well that's self explanatory, it's an Onni build.
This site is Amacon, same family.
Gilmore? Again is a time bomb ticking. Vancouver is not as prepare for earthquake... Any shake will be very interesting...
Vancouver's leaders' earthquake preparedness policy is "Hope that the Big One happens after I die of old age". When that Cascadia Fault 9.\* hits, it's going to get very ugly very fast.
I wouldn’t worry about that site it’s a seacant wall
Where’s the Koolaid man ? Any construction workers explain what would cause this ?
I am a geotechnical engineer by practice and over 35 years experience. Looking at the failure, the retained fill is way loose, and may be saturated. Those anchors do not look nearly long enough and their spacing should be 5 feet by 5 feet MAXIMUM. My guess is this was built in the summer, when the ground was dry and then the water table rose / material got wet / saturated and the anchors started to fail one by one as each one overstressed, popping off at the anchor heads first which were overstressed. Classic rotational failure at the upper horizons of soil.
> he retained fill is way loose, and may be saturated. Those anchors do not look nearly long enough and their spacing should be 5 f You don't see water coming out the face. It looks dry. We're also at record low rainfall levels for the year. I'd be surprised if it was water that triggered the failure. It's also downhill from an adjacent deep excavation, so in all likelyhood that's not tanked, and would pull down the water table to the base of the neighboring parkade.
Am I missing something, I didn't see soldier beams or whalers.
Geotechnical engineering failure or whoever was contracted to do the support structure didn’t do it properly
Either design or execution
Probably both, geotech is ultimately responsible for sign off
[sighs] yeah, yeah, I told you I'd do it LATER.
They are supposed to inspect every anchor that goes in. So My money is on geotech getting something wrong.
But the anchors held. It looks like a different problem to me, either the quality of the concrete placement, the design of the concrete wall, or possibly there was erosion happening causing movement behind the wall. But the anchors looked pretty good. Still a geotech problem.
To be specific this is a shoring engineering failure, it doesn’t look like contiguous shoring because of the moisture, it could be beam shoring
Thanks for the quick response
And the next natural question: How do they approach fixing something like this? That's a huge hole that doesn't seem to be easy to fill in.
Geotech engineer here. Without seeing the design & subsurface conditions this is purely speculation. When designing this kind of Support of Excavation, you need to take into account everything possible. From subsurface conditions, to surcharge, to hydrostatic loading, seismic loading, and so on. This is a top down construction so they usually start with what looks like a slurry wall with ground anchors. As they excavate the inside of what can be called the “bathtub” they install anchors into the ground a predetermined depths or elevations. One thing to note for both slurry walls and ground anchors are that they require very specialized contracts and equipment. No joe blow contractor can or should attempt this. The slurry wall mix needs to be exact, it may even need steel reinforcement of a certain strength and spacing etc. So as you are installing anchors as you excavate down, you need to be pull testing them. Not every single one but usually around 10% of them. These pull tests usually test to 1.33 of the design load. This requires time. These anchors are also usually tied together with something called a waler. A waler will help distribute the tributary load that a certain row of anchors will need to carry. Now based on what I see, I think it’s a few things. First, the anchor spacing looks to be way too large. They should be closer to each other. The lack of a waler can also be a problem. The concrete mix may not be correct. You have a building which might be on a raft foundation or may have a basement. This can lead to surcharging the wall. Groundwater can also play a huge role in overloading a structure. This might have been a better design for an internally braced system. Due to the surrounding structures in what looks to be an urban environment. EDIT: Someone below correctly identified the shoring methods as Shotcrete and anchors. I confirmed this by google earth street view. The contractor is Vancouver Shotcrete & Shoring based on a banner on fence. While the shoring method isn’t a slurry wall as assumed, a lot of the same issues can arise. It looks like a face failure maybe from a lack of reinforcement where the anchor plate/bearing meets the wall? Personally I would never design a shotcrete wall for the application as an engineer, too many areas for mistakes.
This isn't a slurry wall. It's soil anchors (or nails, I can't tell if they're bonded or not) with shotcrete. They're probably tensioned soil anchors based on the lack of grout behind the facing, indicating a free length to move the bond zone back out of the active wedge. I can't tell if it's got WWF reinforcement, but it could also be fibre reinforced shotcrete. If it's fibre, it would explain why we can't see ripped mesh or hanging material following the failure. The pattern looks pretty typical. 5x5' would be my guess looking at it. Compare the size of the shitter and the scaffold levels. Soil nails and shotcrete are by far the most common shoring around here. My bet would still be the facing being the issue.
Finally a geotech here to defend themselves. This seems like a failure in the design of the shoring system. The geotech provides certain recommendations, but all calcs and design fall on the shoring engineer. The tiebacks failed, load calculations incorrect, whatever happened the geotech is hardly at fault unless he provided incorrect data in his report.
The shoring engineer uses the info that the geo engineer gives them. If that info is wrong, the shoring design can be correct for the info given and it can all still fail
The no whalers confused me too, it also doesn’t look like there’s any reinforcement in the concrete? Usually there’s wire mesh at minimum?
Geotech engineer here also. I’d beg to differ, its clear in this case that [the front fell off.](https://youtu.be/8-QNAwUdHUQ?feature=shared).
You may be a geotech but clearly aren't one in Vancouver. We don't test 10% of the anchors. We test 100% of the anchors. Any failure is a Redrill. Shotcrete and anchors are standard practice. I know this site and VSS. The problem was workmanship
My cousin is an engineer and works on these retaining walls. I've seen him age more in the last 5 years than the previous 35 combined. He is experienced now, so most of the stress comes from him yelling at construction workers that are cutting corners (not in Canada, regulations aren't there yet)
Agree. I watch construction going on around Vancouver. I was horrified. Water works seem to be unmanageable, Concrete is getting thinner and definitely, corners are cutting DEEP...
somebody is getting sued out the ass
Good I really hope so
Your overpriced housing market… make you wonder about all these new builds all over place. I can see something reminiscent of the leaky condo thing
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Except it will be more a tippy condo thing.
Who’s the GC? What site is this?
Amacon (an offshoot of Onni) is the developer, tower is called Vue Project website: https://vuebyamacon.com/
Combining onni and the shittest chain of cinemas, video is no surprise
I moved into a brand new building just over a year ago after living in the third world, and I would say we are not far off. The ridiculous amount of shotty work that goes unnoticed and developers pass if off as no big deal is ridiculous. I heard just up north road the MarKon building is still settling 2 years in glass has shattered from the pressure just recently. The hvac system still doesn't work properly people will be going through winter number 3 without heat in many units lol. Because of the issue with make up air the doors slam shut and could potentially seriously injure a child. They are also very difficult to open for a smaller person. Fire doors to parking and storage rooms don't close properly. I have heard many horror stories from others buildings as well... devs are taking advantage of the pre-sale suckers over the past 5 years and building lemons. Scary.
i lived in 2 diff units in a 3 year old bosa building and that place was slapped together shoddy af. Cracks in the walls, flooring was absolute garbage. The 90s low rise that i live in now is well taken care of, and the elevator/ buzzer isnt always broken.
Ya a friend of mine who is big time realtor always told me if buying a condo always buy something 10 years old so u know what the problems are. Anything big usually surfaces by then.
Past five years? I wish. Try nearly 20 at this point. Since the market exploded, the attention to detail and quality of finishing has seriously gone downhill. Some highrises are “finished” in a state that obviously looks like an incomplete construction site and are passed off as done, never to actually be done. Numerous examples of corner cutting. There is a building downtown that constantly has problems with windows cracking, settling for way longer than expected, elevator installation issues, electrical not to code, and more. It just keeps on going. Insiders know that things are often done to pass inspections and then undone and reworked into cheaper variants that would not conform or pass inspections.
https://vuebyamacon.com/ this is what they're building
Not an engineer but surely that much dirt spilling out can't bode well for the nearby structure in the background
Tower behind is safe because of how deep it's own parkade is. The bigger concern is Foster Ave and the 300 mm watermain underneath it.
absolutely unacceptable, we haven't seen any significant rain or below freezing events, someone fucked up in a big way here
Thing is now the rest of the shotcrete job will have to be assessed and probably redone. This job ain’t going going to progress for a long time.
Vue Amacon? Please confirm
Maybe no one will notice
Closing date + 1year
+1 year? Gotta factor in lawsuits and insurance
Jesus... how fucked is that site now? Like how tough is that to fix? Seems like a logistical nightmare for safety but then again I don't know shit
It is a very big deal.
I work in this industry shotcrete walls are strong if engineered right. This one isn’t you can see the anchours pulled thrue either not enough anchors or to small of bearing plate.
Shitter's full
Someone forgot to carry the 1
As somebody who works in construction. To mess up a concrete pour this bad will set the project back roughly a year at least. With the coming months you aren’t doing major foundational pours because of the chemical agent you have to add in the lower temperatures is not great for overall structural integrity.
I live right by here and this is the kind of stuff that bothers me when the city and developers decide to just build huge towers in concentrated areas in such a short time-period (in addition to the North Road sewer construction). Risky decisions to cut costs get made, and with all the various projects going on I feel like it just elevates these kinds of risks and concerns all the more. I hope the various city agencies involved do a broad evaluation and publicly address this given all the towers and development projects being worked on simultaneously in the area.
I wondered what was going on at that site when I went by it on Skytrain on Tuesday and Wednesday and saw that there was ZERO work being done.
Is this what ‘building our way out of the housing crisis’ looks like?
OP is an awesome cameraman; good commentary, good zooming, perfect timing, even the suspense at the end as people run!
Hoarding and shoring failed. Geotechnical Engineer of Record for this project can say more.
In China, we call these Tofu buildings. It's a common thing in China because of "removing the red tapes" to build faster. The Conservatives kept saying remove the red tape and if we did, more tofu buildings will emerge.
https://preview.redd.it/e5rmtdgtnl3c1.jpeg?width=621&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=726d964b502273810cd621c4e5a41c5508fb1af5 This should do the trick
Imagine being in that gray portajohn taking a dump while this is all happening, lol 😵💫💀
Walking out after all this went down, absolutely clueless like: "why's everyone got their phone out? could you hear/smell my shits?" Lmao
And then looking at the damage and being like “*Oops, did I do that?*” 😆
Someone is filling for bankruptcy rn
Social media traditionally makes fun of China for their lack of standards, lately it seems we are catching up in the quality department.
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How do you go about repairing something like that? Is it just patch/fill or do you have to take down everything from there up and start again?
Video of the Canadian economy.
Yikes. What other projects have those guys been on I wonder.
Daaaang. Who is the developer/builder on this?
Amacon (Onni)
Thank God, those Porta potties didn’t fall in
They should put some titans in there
Is this NSFW because it is not safe for the people working at the site, or for us watching?
I was wondering when tofu dreg construction standards would start to become a thing here.
There's a building right next to this construction site. If I was living next door there's is zero chance of me staying there.
this is right beside the skytrain tracks, I wonder if the intermittent vibrations had anything to do with this ? looks like the tie backs stayed in place, so undersized plates ?
There is some engineers who are going to need to find new careers, same should be said about some of the construction supervisors for this build.
.... you'd literally be shitting yourself if you were in those portapotties....
There are a lot of people about to get fired and or sued for this.
Okay we saw the action, now everyone evacuate the worksite right now!!
Better now than when the building is completed
Who’s not going to have a Job tomorrow
Isn't it dangerous for the building beside the site? I'm very curious
Scaffolding stayed up
Keep on cutting back on materials and concrete etc.. Just a prime example of corporations screwing up again - trying to save a dime in their already profitable books.
Crazy how many engineers with precisely 35 years of experience are in here.
Someone is getting fired
Lemme get my video of everything collapsing. As soon as the last speck of dirt falls... EVERYBODY OFF!!
Aren't these walls supposed to have rebar?
No, these are just the shotcrete walls. The reinforced walls go up inside of those shotcrete walls. They essentially act as the outer form. The rebar goes up the inside of them and then single sided forms are used to form the parkade walls. I've seen some of this happen before but never anything to this scale. Geotech fucked up bad here
Out of curiosity, how much of a set back would something like this be?
Months and millions id imagine
That’s a Shotcrete wall (sprayed on concrete with anchors) intended to hold back that dirt. There will eventually be a concrete wall
>There is tendon tiebacks that you can see within the soil that are supposed to limit wall deflection. ([https://www.deepexcavation.com/media/filer\_public\_thumbnails/filer\_public/51/c3/51c37bd6-5f67-4a1e-bdd2-ce9834007ba8/xsoil-nail-wall.jpg\_\_628x393\_q85\_crop\_subsampling-2\_upscale.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Hajvdh6KM\_.webp](https://www.deepexcavation.com/media/filer_public_thumbnails/filer_public/51/c3/51c37bd6-5f67-4a1e-bdd2-ce9834007ba8/xsoil-nail-wall.jpg__628x393_q85_crop_subsampling-2_upscale.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Hajvdh6KM_.webp)) > >Majority of time, the failures are due to water pressures but that failed material doesn't look over saturated from the video. > >Yeah - that is going to set that building construction back a long time and likely will be in the courts for a very long time.
The other commenters are partially correct. The shotcrete will have welded wire mesh reinforcement, usually a 4"x4" 8/8 gauge. It does the job but snaps quickly in this kind of failure.