By Kloe Palmer
An American engineer is confident in the findings of the Christchurch based engineer who assessed and ticked of the CTV building just months before it collapsed.
Brian Kehoe has inspected hundreds of earthquake damaged buildings in California and says he wouldn't change a thing about the way the process was carried out here.
The Royal Commission flew Mr Kehoe to Christchurch from the United States to give his opinion on the quality of the inspection carried out by David Coatsworth on the CTV building over three weeks after the original September 2010 earthquake.
Mr Kehoe has no problems with how things were done.
“Essentially we would have done exact same thing following an earthquake, I have done this hundreds of times after earthquakes and followed the same procedure that Mr Coatsworth did.”
Yesterday Mr Coatsworth told the inquiry he spent four hours visually checking the building, taking hundreds of photos, but finalised his report without sighting any structural drawings.
Mr Kehoe stands by Coatsworth, saying they would have been nice to have, but not necessary.
“If he saw structural damage he could of asked for the drawings, but given the limited damage that he saw there's no real need to look at structural drawings.”
Throughout this stage of the inquiry New Zealand's coloured sticker system has been brought up as an issue of confusion.
Witnesses have agreed that that even though it's widely believed that green means a building is completely safe, that may not be the case.
Mr Kehoe says they've had the same problem in the US, so it's been changed, and now green only confirms an inspection's been completed, but nothing else.
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