Why does everything collapse?

Why does everything collapse?

They got off with a fright, the supporters on the stands of the De Goffert stadium in Nijmegen that partly collapsed on Sunday 17 October. According to professor Rob Nijsse, professor of Structural Design at the Faculty of Architecture and CiTG, this accident could have been prevented. “A concrete beam does not just break off,” he says in the newspaper Trouw. “A group of partying supporters is indeed a dramatic load for such a stand, but it has to be able to withstand it. A good inspection would clearly have found something.”

And good inspections is what he believes has been lacking in the Netherlands for years. In 2018, Nijsse already spoke out about the failing supervision, in the article in Delta ‘Why does everything collapse? (article in Dutch)’ The reason for the interview was a series of incidents: five balconies that collapsed in Maastricht, the roof of a parking garage near Eindhoven Airport that came down due to a construction error and not much later the collapse of a parking garage in Wormerveer. “Municipal building supervision is left to the free market these days,” said Nijsse. “It has become a sham. Municipal building supervision, as we knew it in the past, still instilled fear.”

After the roof of the stadium in Alkmaar collapsed in 2019, the safety of stadiums was scrutinised. Nijsse notes that although a protocol for assessing the structural safety of football stadiums has been drawn up in the meantime, compliance with this protocol is not enforced.