Elevators at the MG government headquarters need structural reinforcement and recovery works, according to an engineering report | Minas Gerais

The elevators at Cidade Administrativa, headquarters of the government of MG, in Belo Horizonte, need reinforcement works It is structural recovery before they start working again, an engineering report points out. The document, with almost a thousand pages, was obtained by g1 this Tuesday (2).

In November 2023, a 66-year-old public servant died at the scene. According to co-workers, Marcos Tadeu Rozemberg fell ill after climbing several flights of stairs in the Minas Building, which, at the time, had had its elevators broken for about a week. The equipment remains closed.

The Minas Building has 30 elevators, 22 of which are from the Otis brand and eight, private, from the Atlas brand. The company Vistoriar Engenharia was hired to inspect 24 of them and identified several problems, such as structural risks and possibilities of collapse. See below the main conclusions of the technical opinion:

• The metal pillars of the elevator counterweights were not anchored according to the project, resulting in an empty space between the reinforced concrete beam and the column fixing plates;
• Most of the fixing bars are flexed and were caused by the “Pino Effect” and also in the installations where they were hammered, as the holes in the reinforced concrete beams and the fixing plates of the metal pillars did not coincide, introducing stresses into parts;
• It is essential to reinforcement of all metallic pillars of the Minas Building;
• Services must be performed with the greatest technical rigorcoordinated by a civil engineer with proven experience in the area of ​​structural reinforcement/recovery;
• The release of elevators in the Minas Building (except private ones) must occur after structural reinforcement and recovery worksupon approval report.

The document cites several factors that can lead to failure of the support structure, including wear, corrosion, overload, installation or maintenance failures, mainly due to the use of inappropriate material (see photos below).

Also according to the report, in elevator “E” it was observed that some metal pillars were “collapsed with the counterweights on the cabin” (see photo below).

The inspection also assessed the conditions of the 30 elevators installed in the Gerais Building. They presented similar anomalies and, despite there being no structural collapse, Reinforcement of the pillars is recommended as “prevention of future occurrences”.

The State Secretariat for Planning and Management (Seplag) informed that, upon completion of the report, procedures were initiated to carry out repair services, with the aim of correcting the problems that compromised the functioning of the elevators in the Administrative City. Later this week, the hiring of the engineering company must be finalized.

“[…] the Secretariat requested quotes from three specialized engineering companies to carry out the service as established in the technical document. In March, the budgets were received and the process was carried out, which includes technical and legal analysis, to define the company that will carry out the service in accordance with the rules of emergency bidding exemption”, said the ministry.

Seplag also stated that the opinion no found problems with the building structurehighlighting that the detected failure “does not affect the integrity, stability or solidity of the structure of the Minas Building”.

While the use of social elevators is not resumed, servers working in the building were authorized to telework.