A firm of consultant engineers currently working on the Dublin Port Tunnel was yesterday fined £500,000 following conviction on two charges arising out of a tunnel collapse at Heathrow Airport. The Austrian firm, Geoconsult Gmbh, was also ordered to pay £100,000 towards the costs of the month-long trial at the Old Bailey in London.
The civil engineering firm of Balfour Beatty was fined £1.2 million in connection with the collapse of the tunnel, which happened at around 1 a.m. on October 21st, 1994 when no one was in it.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled when an enormous crater appeared between Heathrow's two main runways, dragging down car parks and causing buildings to sway.
The court was told that the failure could have "unzipped" the Picadilly London Underground line and crushed people to death and that it was "luck more than judgment" that this did not happen.
Geoconsult, of Salzburg, a company with four directors and 95 staff, monitored the Heathrow Express Rail Link during the four-month period from May 1994 when the tunnel was being built by Balfour Beatty. The firm was responsible for the design and the technical supervision of the tunnel.
A jury convicted the Austrian firm on two charges, brought under the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974, of failing to ensure the safety of employees and members of the public. Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to the same offences in November 1997 and Mr Justice Cresswell imposed a £1.2 million fine. Geoconsult was fined £500,000 and both it and Balfour Beatty were ordered to pay a further £100,000 each towards the costs of the trial.
The judge said: "This was one of the worst civil engineering disasters in the United Kingdom in the last quarter of a century. The tunnels were being built below part of the world's busiest international airport and there was considerable potential for harm."
Both firms fell "seriously short" of the appropriate standard and reasonable steps, resulting in serious breaches of the Health and Safety Regulations.
"It is a matter of chance whether death or any serious injury resulted from those very serious breaches," he said.
Balfour Beatty was running a self-certification system which gave it control of construction and design. It employed a single Geoconsult engineer to carry out monitoring of soil shifts and interpret any data.