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Banquet Hall Collapse
q On May 24, 2001 a banquet hall on the fourth floor of a building in Jerusalem collapsed during a wedding party. The fourth floor of the building crashed through two lower floors, sending many guests plunging some 60 feet.
q Of the nearly 700 guests 23 lost their lives and over three hundred ended up in the hospital.
q There were about 150 people dancing when within 30 seconds the floor sank two feet and then collapsed. Many of those who survived said they had worried about the way the floor was shaking as people danced. The guests were dancing to a very popular, bouncy Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) tune.
q Police has detained and charged with manslaughter the dance hall owners, engineers, and building contractors.
q More than 30 million square feet (over 6500 buildings) in Israel were built using the cheap “Pal-Kal” method which uses metal plates and thin sheets of concrete in construction. This relatively cheap, lightweight construction method was popular in the 1980s even though Israel is located in an earthquake zone and such buildings would be disaster prone. The Pal-Kal building method was banned in 1996 because of safety concerns. The dance hall was built using the Pal-Kal construction method. In the area of the collapsed dance hall similar buildings include a collection of car dealerships, electronic stores and factory outlets. More popular buildings built using the Pal-Kal construction method include the Bank of Israel, central library of Tel Aviv University, Hebrew Union College, Caesar Hotel in Tiveria, and a number of shopping centers.
q The owners of the dance hall had instructed a building contractor doing renovations to remove four supporting pillars and walls to create more space.
q There are allegations of lax enforcement of building codes by municipal officials. The dance hall was built in 1986 as an industrial building. It was later converted for use as a banquet hall. In 1993 the municipality issued a 4-year temporary permit for the change. Since 1997 the hall had been functioning without a valid permit.
q Despite the dance hall catastrophe, the construction industry has not made the necessary safety changes to correct building standards.
Expert Answer
Memorandum
Monday, 28 Aug, 2017
TO: The Management Group, Paul LLC
From: Richard Biers
Subject: Strategic Features- Lessons Learnt from Banquet Hall Collapse
Introduction:
Over the years Management Proffessionals and Consultants were stressing for the Imortance of Strategic Management plans and executions with littl success. But a lesson learnt from a tragedy drives the Point more powerfully!
This Tragedy is a classic case of how Strategic planning could fail during implementation. An exterprise can be effectively managed through a Strategic management by create a strategic plan and ensures it proper imlmentation.
The planning is thefirst step where the mission of the organisation is defined and strategies defined to achieve it. The ways to achieve is the action plan which involves planning goals, resources and strategy that analyses both the exiting and future opportunities and to counter act present and future threats.
In this tragedy, the objectives may have been set, the plan it self looks like a failure, as they converted a old industry building, of cheap quality construction, to a commercial place and without a permit.
And on the strategic implementation of the plan, involves development of action plan, implementation and monitoring, recycling and reformulating plan of the enterprise.
The different plans like strategic plans, functional plans, operating plans, and organisational plans are used to execute the strategy. In this case the operation plan has completly fallen back and the monitoring aspects which should have monitored the operations and its plan had failed.
As management proffessionals stresses, it is most impporant to have the entire gamut of process in control to have the effective implementation of the strategic plans.
In the systems approach, the organisational objectives take precedence over departmental objectives whereas in a future oriented practice the impact of present decisions on the future product is focussed, where the current factors that could potentially impact its market in the future is analysed. And in a continues dynamic process it reviews the whole planning process continuously and strategic planning is done for time line in a long range planning.
We need to consider which suits our business and accordinly act upon it. Based on this experience we need to esnure that the planning is equally foccused as implementation and monitoring and control takes center stage post implementation.
