{"id":435872,"date":"2026-05-20T00:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T00:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435872\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T00:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T00:51:10","slug":"failed-tauranga-car-parking-building-two-engineers-fined-one-suspended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435872\/","title":{"rendered":"Failed Tauranga car parking building: Two engineers fined, one suspended"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

\nThe site between Harington and Hamilton Streets in downtown Tauranga was once intended for a multi-storey public transport hub.
\nPhoto: Google Maps\n<\/p>\n

Two engineers have been fined, and one of them suspended for three months, over a botched car parking building that cost the Tauranga City Council millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

The council abandoned the nine-storey Harington Street Transport Hub project in 2020 after discovering structural design deficiencies.<\/p>\n

The council spent $25 million and sold the building for a dollar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Engineering New Zealand investigated its complaints against three engineers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has now fined James Knight and suspended him from its register for three months, fined Andrew Thompson, and censured both of them. The third engineer is appealing.<\/p>\n

The investigation found mistakes and gaps in earthquake risk calculations and design reviews.<\/p>\n

“The alterations Mr Thompson made to the ramp beam connections crossing the separation plane created a weakness that in an earthquake, may have led to local failure of the ramps,” said the decision summary<\/a> of the disciplinary committee.<\/p>\n

Knight did a design review and identified several deficiencies but then signed a Producer Statement that things were compliant, and the council consented it in 2018.<\/p>\n

Consultants went on to find 39 defects, many structural, and tried to come up with an overall fix.<\/p>\n

“The council abandoned [it] due to the significant costs that had by then been incurred and the substantial costs that would be associated with remediation,” the summary said.<\/p>\n

Thompson, who had over 30 years experience and an unblemished record, had admitted being negligent with designs that had “readily identifiable errors”. The committee found “a serious lack of competence”.<\/p>\n

He was fined $4500 and ordered to pay $20,000 costs. His application for permanent name suppression was turned down.<\/p>\n

“Mr Thompson does not present an ongoing risk to the public.”<\/p>\n

Structural design sign-offs rely on peer reviews by other engineers.<\/p>\n

The summary said Knight’s approach was to check some, but not all of a design, then if they identified any issues, to accept the designer’s word they had been addressed.<\/p>\n

At Harington, under “time pressure”, Knight found issues with ramp reinforcing, vertical loads and collector beam connections, but did not follow up properly, and missed other design problems.<\/p>\n

“It ought to have been very apparent to Mr Knight during his peer review that the Revised Design was seriously flawed.”<\/p>\n

He admitted his sign-off was done in an incompetent manner.<\/p>\n

Knight also had an unblemished record. He had done professional development since Harington and the committee judged he “no longer presents as a significant risk to the public”.<\/p>\n

He was fined $2000 with costs of $40,000, and suspended from the Chartered Professional Engineer register for three months. He did not seek permanent name suppression.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The site between Harington and Hamilton Streets in downtown Tauranga was once intended for a multi-storey public transport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-435872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}