Regina engineer Scott Gullacher will face a disciplinary hearing next month over allegations that he broke the rules when he designed a bridge in rural Saskatchewan that collapsed just hours after it was opened to the public. 

On Sept. 14, 2018, the Rural Municipality (RM) of Clayton announced on its Facebook page that “the Dyck Memorial Bridge is now complete and open.” 

Later that same day, the bridge collapsed. No one was injured. 

In an interview just days after the collapse, the RM’s Reeve Duane Hicks said some of the pilings on which the bridge was built had collapsed. 

“So something tells me that something underneath the ground happened. I don’t know what it was. They don’t know what it was. Nobody knows what it is,” he said.

At the time, Hicks chalked it up to an “act of God.”

However, there may have been another explanation.

Hicks also revealed that the engineer who designed the bridge, Scott Gullacher, hadn’t done a geotechnical investigation of the riverbed before installing the piles.

After years of investigation, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS) posted a notice on its website on Wednesday saying Gullacher will face a disciplinary hearing in early June. 

The association alleges Gullacher failed to practise “in a careful and diligent manner” when he designed the bridge and the screw piles that were supposed to hold it up. APEGS also claims Gullacher was offering services or advice in an area outside of his professional competence.

In addition, the association alleges he failed to be “careful and diligent” in his design of bridges in four other Saskatchewan RMs including Scott, Caledonia, Perdue and Mervin. 

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