The November 3, breach of the East Demerara Water Conservancy Dam was an engineering failure that could have been prevented and is not a good thing for engineering in Guyana.

That was the consensus of three prominent engineers whom Stabroek News approached for their views on the report of the probe team, led by Dr Harold Davis, Guysuco's agricultural services director, which investigated the causes of the breach. The other members of the team were George Howard, R B Lachmansingsh, Paul Sarran and Col John Lewis, A synopsis of their findings was published yesterday in the Stabroek News.

Basing his comments on the report in this newspaper, Phillip Allsopp, retired Chief Engineer (Roads) and Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Economic Development under the previous government, said that the report was "damning" as it indicated that the project had been neither properly conceived nor executed.

He said that it indicated a lack of preparation, that no design work had been done, and that there had been poor monitoring. He added that professional engineers would appreciate the deficiencies more than the layman.

Charles Ceres, who heads Ground Structures Engineering Consultants, based his comments too on this newspaper's reportage. He observed that the deficiencies were symptomatic of the failure of the government engineering services but doubted whether anything would be done to improve the way in which they operated.

Ceres said that the lack of design drawings was a critical element as in the their absence there was nothing to guide the contractor.

The report reads: "It appears that a VSO engineer, Mr Chakaborthi was responsible for the design and preparation of the contract documents. It is clear that little investigation and thought was put into the design of the works and preparation of the Tender Documents. It seems from the tender documents that much of the design work would be done in the construction phase. This approach is highly unsatisfactory in that no dam assessment was carried out to determine whether it was feasible to undertake the dam construction. To have awarded the contract and be faced with significant changes in the Scope of Works would have created major difficulties during execution."

Ceres, however, took issue with the weight placed in the report on the presence of extraneous material in the area of the breach and which it concludes would have been incorporated in the area of the breach site.

He offered an alternative interpretation, explaining that in relation to slope stability and stabilization, the presence of organic material could very well be a means of achieving the desired stabilisation of the structure. He noted a text by Abramson et al which contains a section on bio technical stabilisation and discusses the use of organic material in the process.

Critical too for Ceres was the apparent lack of supervision to monitor that the conditions in the field were similar to those simulated in laboratory tests, the results of which would have been fed into the design of the works to be executed. He explained that the design of the works would have been based on certain assumptions made about the soil strength parameters obtained from laboratory tests. The monitoring would have been to ensure that the situation in the field was similar to that simulated in the laboratory.

Ceres also expressed concern about the conclusion that the breach had been precipitated as a result of excessive seepage which led to piping. He said that "piping" was predicated on the presence of different sizes of material having been used in the construction but there had been no mention of zoning in the embankment.

Ceres could not say from the Stabroek News report what other factors also prevailed such as the water level, which, if it had been high, could have resulted in the erosion of the crest of the dam.

Ceres also cautioned against any rush to repair other sections of the dam without ascertaining why it was still standing and what contribution the presence of organic material was making to its stability.

Also, he said that the closeness of the excavation to the toe of the dam meant nothing if "piping" was the cause of the breach.

Asked to comment on the fact that the Head of the National Drainage and Irrigation Board had been the engineer for the project, Ceres said that it was critical that the engineer be somewhat independent of the client to whom he had a responsibility for ensuring that the approved design was achieved in the execution of the works. He stated too that the engineer must also be independent of the contractor.

Basing his report on the Stabroek News' story as well, Terry Fletcher of Terrence Fletcher Associates was also concerned about the absence of adequate design work being done in preparation for the project. He noted that there seemed to have been no adequate analysis of the results of the soil tests and any indication as to why they had been done.

Fletcher also expressed the view that it was a conflict of interest for the Head of the National Drainage and Irrigation Board to be the engineer overseeing the project.

He was also critical of the engineering supervision of the project by the Inter American Development Bank, which had provided the $150.9 million for the project. He raised questions as to who the engineer had been who was monitoring the project on its behalf, and if they had been satisfied with the reports on the design and the manner in which it was being executed.

This newspaper was unable to contact Chief Executive Officer of the National Drainage and Irrigation Board Ravi Narine for his reaction to the report.