199 Knightsbridge Development Ltd v WSP UK Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr. Justice Edwards-Stuart |
| Judgment Date | 28 February 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 43 (TCC) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HT-10-38 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Technology and Construction Court) |
| Date | 28 February 2014 |
[2014] EWHC 43 (TCC)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
TECHNOLOGY AND CONSTRUCTION COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Rolls Building, 7 Rolls Buildings
London, EC4A 1NL
Mr. Justice Edwards-Stuart
Case No: HT-10-38
David Sears Esq, QC &Benjamin Pilling Esq (instructed by DAC Beachcroft LLP) for the Claimant
Roger ter Haar Esq, QC &Richard Coplin Esq (instructed by CMS Cameron McKenna LLP) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 4 th & 5 th December 2013; 9 th– 13 th December 2013; 16 th December 2013 and 19 th December 2013.
Additional written submissions 4 th and 5 th February 2014.
Contents
| Introduction | 1 |
| The background | 10 |
| The system at 199 Knightsbridge | 19 |
| The design process | 28 |
| The "black building" test on 30 August 2005 | 41 |
| The events of 15 September 2005 | 44 |
| The witnesses who were not involved in the events of 15 September 2005 | 66 |
| Mr. Groves | 66 |
| Mr. Keith Shenstone | 74 |
| Mr. Scott | 82 |
| The experts | 84 |
| Dr. Andrew Prickett | 85 |
| Mr. David Gosling | 87 |
| Mr. Terry Dix | 89 |
| Other evidence as to the availability of anti-surge valves for residential systems prior to 2005 | 92 |
| The CAVSA anti-surge valve | 92 |
| The Vent-O-Mat RBX surge arrestor ("Cla Val") | 96 |
| Other material | 98 |
| WSP's duty and the applicable law | 101 |
| The scope of WSP's duty | 112 |
| The relevant principles | 115 |
| The configuration of the cold water pipework and its implications | 122 |
| The mechanism of the failure | 141 |
| The Claimant's general case on design | 150 |
| The Claimant's case on the trigger events | 165 |
| The substitution of the Grundfos pump set for the Allan Aqua set | 167 |
| The request for an instruction to install double check valves | 168 |
| The commissioning stage | 170 |
| Review of the O&M manuals | 189 |
| The discussions about the emergency generator | 191 |
| The "black building" test | 193 |
| Was there a conversation between Mr. Groves and WSP | 194 |
| Causation | 202 |
| The installation of surge arresters | 202 |
| The establishment of a slow refill procedure following an unplanned shutdown | 218 |
| Conclusions | 225 |
| RULING | Ruling |
| The Claimant's case in relation to potentiometers | X |
Introduction
199 Knightsbridge is a large and very prestigious apartment block in London that was built a few years ago. It is now known as "The Knightsbridge". At the relevant time the freehold owner of the building was the Claimant.
On 15 September 2005, when the building had been partly handed over, there was serious flooding resulting from two failures of the cold water pipework. In the first case, a 25 mm pipe joint failed, in the other a 15 mm copper pipe burst under pressure. Extensive damage was caused by the subsequent escape of water.
The issue in this case is whether WSP UK Ltd ("WSP"), the Mechanical and Electrical ("M&E") engineers who designed the cold water system, are liable for the flooding. WSP say that no reasonable engineer at the time would have foreseen or guarded against the events that occurred.
The Claimant says that everything that occurred could have been foreseen. If WSP had thought through their design, says the Claimant, they would have identified the risk of a potentially catastrophic failure following an unscheduled shutdown of the cold water booster pumps and the ensuing partial drain down of the water system which would occur as the occupants of the building continued to use water.
One of the striking features of this case is that, with the benefit of hindsight, the potential problem can be identified without any great difficulty. Once the problem was identified, so the Claimant submits, the solution would have been equally apparent.
However, another notable feature of the case is that not one of the leading building services practices in the UK identified the problem prior to 2005. In the light of this it is submitted on behalf of WSP that they cannot have been negligent if what they did was no different from that being done at the time by apparently competent engineers of similar experience and resources. This is a formidable point.
At one stage during the evidence I came close to thinking that WSP's case was a good one. However, after hearing all the evidence and having had time to reflect, I have concluded that competent engineers in WSP's position should have foreseen the problem and taken steps to deal with it. However the question then arises as to whether, had they done so, the flooding could have been prevented.
This question of causation is also very difficult. However, I have reached the clear conclusion that, if WSP had appreciated the problem as I consider they should have done, it has not been shown that the steps that WSP should have taken would have prevented either of the two failures that occurred on 15 September 2005.
The Claimant was represented by Mr. David Sears QC and Mr. Benjamin Pilling, instructed by DAC Beachcroft, and WSP was represented by Mr. Roger ter Haar QC and Mr. Richard Coplin, instructed by CMS Cameron McKenna.
The background
During the latter part of the 1990s the statutory water undertaker for London (Thames Water) decided to reduce the mains water pressure in order to limit the volume of water that was being lost through leaks in the system. Until then the practice in London had been for domestic water systems in relatively low rise residential buildings to be fed from a tank in the roof space. The only exception was one tap, usually in the kitchen, that was fed directly from the mains.
As a result of the combination of the reduction in the mains water pressure and the need to make more use of the limited building land available in London by building high rise residential developments, the conventional solution of supplying the cold water to the building by a gravity fed system from a tank at the top of the building was no longer always viable.
An additional factor was that, from a commercial point of view, apartments at the top of a high rise building are the ones that command the highest prices. It was therefore uneconomic to use this premium space for the storage of water, quite apart from the added problems and cost of having to strengthen the building in order to support a substantial weight of water at high level.
Thus towards the end of the 1990s the practice of supplying the cold water system in a residential building from a holding tank at the top of the building was often no longer followed. Instead, at least in high rise developments, cold water systems used booster pumps to increase the mains pressure and to pump the water to all parts of the building.
Initially a major difficulty in the design and operation of such systems was the wear on the pumps. This was because when water was drawn off the system the pumps, which only operated at one speed, would start up at full speed, sometimes only to stop again after a few minutes. Whenever a conventional fixed speed electric pump is started there is a very high load on the motor and so frequent starting of the pump can damage the armature. Experience showed that unacceptable damage might occur if fixed speed pumps were started more frequently than about once every 10 minutes.
At first this problem was solved by the incorporation of a small jockey pump that could recharge the cold water system when small quantities of water were drawn off, thereby avoiding the need for the main pumps to start so often. But one drawback of this arrangement was that the single jockey pump represented a vulnerable point of weakness in the system.
However, by the turn of the century a new type of pump motor with a variable speed drive ("VSD"), controlled by a device known as an inverter, had been developed at a commercially viable price. VSD pump sets then began to replace the combination of fixed speed pumps and a jockey pump. VSD pumps would typically be set, when in automatic mode, to reach, say, 70% of their capacity within 2–3 seconds of start up, although this period could usually be made longer, if required. However, if a VSD pump was started manually it would usually start up at full speed straight away. At least, that is how the system operated as it was installed in 2003 at 199 Knightsbridge.
There was a further device that was designed to ease the load on the pumps in boosted cold water systems and to maintain a more consistent pressure of water. This was the accumulator. An accumulator, crudely described, is a tank which contains a rubber balloon or membrane. The balloon, or one side of the membrane, is filled with a compressible gas. When the booster pumps are started water is pumped into the accumulator, which is installed downstream of the pumps, thereby compressing the gas within the membrane. As water is drawn off the system, the compressed gas expands and pushes water back into the system so as to maintain the pressure. This not only evens out the small variations in pressure that would otherwise occur but also saves the pumps from having to start in order to supply only a small quantity of water.
However, the capacity of accumulators is not large. The one installed at 199 Knightsbridge had a capacity of 100 litres. In the context of a building containing over 200 apartments, this is not substantial. It is important to emphasise that its function was to improve the consistency of the pressure in the system and to save wear on the pumps by reducing the number of occasions on which they had to start. Although to a limited extent the accumulator might be able to absorb a sudden increase in the water pressure of the system, I did not understand that to be its principal function: it was simply a feature of how...
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