OLIVER COLLINS WANYAMA V. ENGINEERS BOARD OF KENYA

RULING OF THE COURT

Just two weeks after it was inspected and launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta, Sigiri Bridge spanning River Nzoia’s banks and linking Bunyala South and North collapsed on 26 June, 2017, injuring a number of masons who were working on it at the time. But that is not the issue before us. To establish the cause of this accident, the Engineers Board of Kenya (the respondent) constituted a committee whose report dated August, 2017 indicated that the accident occurred primarily because;

“....of the wrong sequencing of the concreting of the bridge deck resulting in unbalanced forces that caused instability and failure of sections of the bridge. The wrong sequencing was as a result of failure to follow standard design requirements and adhere to standard construction procedures.”

The committee also attributed the accident to inadequacy in the supervision of the works and concluded that the ultimate responsibility for the works lay with the contractors’ consortium comprising C…