Law Society House Description
The NI Law Society’s new building on Victoria Street received planning consent in March 2006 to replace an existing three storey building which was demolished during summer 2007. The Law Society own the land and occupy part of the building and let out the remaining floor space as retail and office use. The five storey building designed by Todd Architects also includes basement car parking with access from Victoria Street. Construction began onsite in March 2007 with site clearance and the building was fully completed in June 2009.

Law Society House Construction Accident - March 2008
Whilst pouring concrete unto the second floor of the new office building the structure gave way, collapsing and causing much of the scaffolding and temporary props to cave in. The incident happened at around 10:40am on Monday 10 March 2008. It was reported at the time that around 60 workers were onsite, however, luckily only six needed to be admitted to hospital and there were no life threatening injuries. The Fire Service attended immediately with nine engines and a specialist unit and deployed search teams to search the wreckage for any trapped workers. The Health & Safety Executive were quickly onsite to investigate the cause of the accident.

In a statement from Turkington Construction on the day they stated that they…

… "deeply regret the incident which took place today at Law Society house. We are now working closely with the Health and Safety Executive to investigate the causes of the incident and to ensure the site is secured to the public and our workforce."

After the iinitial investigation and the survey of the site to evaluate the dangers posed by the collapsed structure work began on removing the wreckage and much of the partially constructed building was demolished. This had a significant impact on the completion date of November 2008 and construction was not completed until June 2009.

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Subcontractor: Stothers M&E
Lift Installation: Northern Lifts & Escalators Ltd