By Annabelle Tukia
Important documents about the design of the CTV building are missing, according to the man who oversaw the work.
Alan Reay's firm carried out the design of the building in the 1980s, but today he told the Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission some crucial paperwork cannot be located.
Mr Reay says people are entitled to know why the CTV building collapsed during the February 22 quake, killing 115 people, but today under cross examination he admitted his company wasn't able to locate all of the relevant information relating to the design work they carried out on the building in the 1980s.
“Everyone in the office has access to files to go and look at whatever they choose and if someone chose to go and get information from that file they would have done it and may not have put it back,” said Mr Reay.
Amongst some of the missing information are timesheets and correspondence with a council inspector about whether the building adhered to construction standards of the day.
Mr Reay said after the February quake his company's records were in a shambles, so a decision was made to transfer the files from a disk to a hard drive - Marcus Elliot for the families asked Mr Reay to produce the CTV disk to the Royal Commission.
Brian Kennedy lost his wife Faye in the collapse, and he says he expected an engineering firm would have better record keeping.
“I think it comes down to selective memory in a way and that’s fairly strong, I know, but what else can we draw if all of a sudden we have part of a record and other parts are no where to be seen,” Mr Kennedy told the commission.
But Mr Reay told the hearing his firm had no legal obligation to retain the files.
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