Earthquakes are scary things. To the

mind of someone who has never

experienced them, they sound completely

terrifying.

Of course, where I live, it's not very

well known for seismic activity. So,

it's not something I've really become

accustomed to.

However, other countries experience

earthquakes regularly.

And needless to say, these countries'

buildings and infrastructure are

designed and built with this in mind.

It's amazing what a building that's

designed to experience an earthquake can

withstand.

It's truly amazing until a building

fails to shrug off some seismic

activity. So, clearly when an earthquake

hits and only one building in a city

fails, then something went wrong.

Really wrong.

What's even stranger is that the

earthquake in our story today didn't

even happen in the same country as our

building collapse. Today, we're covering

the bizarre case of the Bangkok,

Thailand State Audit Office building

collapse, where accusations of fake

steel reinforcement were bounced around

in the press.

But the cause was much more deeper than

that.

Watch on to find out. My name is John,

and welcome to Plainly Difficult. This

video wouldn't have been possible if it

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below.

To build a new tower.

Our story begins like most structural

failure videos, with the need for a new

building. And in our case, it is the

need for a state audit building. Now,

the words state building project may

bring a shiver down your spine, as there

are countless incidents of buildings in

this subject category failing

or at best, running millions over

budget.

And spoiler alert, this would be the

case for our subject today. Okay, so the

SAO is an independent state organization

that stands for the State Auditor

Office. Its inception was to be the

organization for examining and

scrutinizing the accounts and financial

activities of the Thailand government

with the idea being able to prosecute

cases of fraudulent activity. By late

2010s, the office needed its own new,

well, offices.

They have been investigating a number of

cases with potential fraud within the

Thai government and some of its

government owned companies.

The new building that they wanted was to

be a 30-story or 137-m

or 44-ft tall with three basement levels

tower nestled in Kampang Phet 2 Road,

Chatuchak District, Bangkok.

With a striking glass facade, looking at

the renderings of the building, it was

going to be a pretty modern-looking

building. In addition to the tower, the

project would have a larger building

built around it on the lower floors. It

was given the green light and

construction on the 2.36

billion baht project began in 2020. The

project would be built by a partnership

composed of Thailand Italy Development

Company Limited and China Railway 10

Bureau Thailand Company Limited

supervised by PN Synchronized Co.

Limited, W and Associates Consultants

Limited, and KP Consultants Limited.

It was penned by designing firms

Forum Architect Company Limited and Mine

Heart Thailand Limited.

The building was to be a reinforced

concrete slab and column structure

offering a lovely 82,000

sq m of floor space. The building would

also be designed to feel more open,

which was achieved via having beam less

slabs, aka flat slab floors. In addition

to this, the building's columns were

largely placed around the outer

perimeter.

But it wasn't all open and free within

the floors. Lateral protection in a

country like Thailand is very important

due to the high chance of seismic

activity. This was provided by a vital

part of the building, its center rear

reinforced core of shear walls. These

were intended to limit the effects of

lateral forces on the tower, but also

played a role in the overall gravity

resistance of the building. Placed

inside this strong core was the

building's lifts and stairwells.

As I mentioned before, construction

began in 2020 with clearance of the

site. However, as you may know, this

year was pretty bad for slowing any type

of project down due to the old

international coffin competition of

2020.

However, as soon as possible, the

building's construction would resume. By

April 2024,

China Railway Number 10 Engineering

Group had announced that the building

had been topped out, and then work was

being completed on installing the

building's glass facade and first fit

internally.

But sadly, the building was never going

to be completed.

A disaster.

So although our disaster will actually

happen in Bangkok, the initiating event

was actually across the border in the

country of Myanmar.

On the 28th of March, 2025 at

50 minutes past 12:00 in the afternoon,

a moment magnitude of between 7.7 and

7.9 struck close to the city of

Mandalay.

The quake opened up a rupture stretching

for more than 460 km or 285 mi. This is

absolutely insane when you look at the

pictures of nearly 300 mi of the surface

rupture.

Shock waves from the earthquake shot out

from the rupture line towards the

Myanmar-Thailand border. The shallow

geology of Thailand made it very

vulnerable to seismic waves being

emitted from the epicenter.

Buildings began to shake across the

region at 13:27.

The SAO building began to shake as seen

in CCTV and dashcams.

The building was around 30% complete,

but had been structurally framed out and

in theory was sound.

Therefore, workers were spread about the

building undertaking the first fit and

glass wall facade installation. Within

fractions of a second, the building

shaking turned into a catastrophic

failure. The shear walls could be seen

failing and crumbling around the bottom

of the building followed by column

failure. And in just 8 seconds, the

building experienced a total and

complete pancake collapse.

So quick was the failure that the

building fell not much slower than the

freefall time of an estimated roughly 5

seconds.

As soon as the dust began to settle,

workers on site rushed into and towards

the now massive pile of rubble to try

and assist in finding any survivors.

Emergency services were soon to reach

the site and any and all heavy equipment

was used to scour through the rubble.

The search would go on for weeks as

bodies were gradually liberated from the

mass of pulverized concrete. As each

section of the building was dug through,

it was removed for the search of the

lower levels. By 18 days post collapse,

41 bodies had been recovered and by the

6th of May 2025, search and rescue

operations had reached the lowest parts

of the building.

By mid-May, the search and rescue

efforts were concluded with a total

death toll of 95 people with four more

missing and a further nine injured.

A significant proportion of the victims

were foreign nationals with an estimated

22 coming from Myanmar alone and another

person coming from Vietnam, highlighting

the migrant worker nature of the

project.

Rebuilding the tower would be canceled

and the site would be required to be

cleared of all its debris and rubble.

Many other buildings throughout Bangkok

had experienced some damage from the

earthquake.

But this amounted to mainly minor

cracking in concrete structures.

The fact that this brand new massive

tower had collapsed so quickly was a

major concern to pretty much everyone.

Both government and the public needed

why and this would end up with many

accusations being thrown around.

The investigation.

Almost as soon as the rubble and dust

had settled on the 28th of March,

Thailand's Prime Minister ordered the

formation of an investigation panel.

Investigators started pouring over the

wreckage at the same time as the rescue

work was being undertaken and almost

straight away as some would quote

anomalies were found within the

structure. Initially the finger of blame

was placed at the steel quality within

the concrete reinforcement

by the Thai government. It was alleged

that it was too soft or even fake.

However, the original assertion in April

2025

was overruled in June by the Thai

government

when it released its official findings.

Presented by Prime Minister Shinawatra,

the findings pointed out the key issues

in the structure.

Test results taken from concrete core

samples from the vital core sections,

shear walls, were found to be below the

specified threshold.

They also found that the plans had been

changed during the project and were not

compliant.

Also vital to the reinforcement steel in

the concrete, although not fake, was not

as long as it was needed thus weakening

the reinforcement's effect.

This meant that the vital shear walls

were substandard around the lifts and

stairs and were unable to withstand the

lateral forces of the earthquake.

But how were they substandard? Well, an

issue came up during the project as it

was being built. It was realized that

the design didn't allow for the extra

space needed for the electrics needed to

run the building.

This caused a problem in that the lifts

and stairwells were deemed too small and

smaller than the legal minimum of 1.5 m.

In order to gain the extra space

required, the shear walls width was

reduced by around 5 cm or around 2 in

and like a lot of things in life, a

couple of inches short can be a bit of a

problem. Now, the building was poorly

designed and it was shown to have been

built with poor materials and poor

workmanship. In fact, the reinforcement

was inadequately placed within the

concrete.

But what was the failure sequence? Well,

this is where a brilliant post on

Facebook by Professor Worsak

Kanok-Nukulchai brilliantly lays it out

for us less educated like myself in the

art of structural design.

He pointed out when looking at the

photograph of the debris site, you can

see that the building pretty much

completely fell into its own footprint.

This shows us that the building

experienced a pancake collapse. Pancake

collapses are when the building's

load-bearing elements such as columns

and shear walls fail causing each floor

to crash down into one another.

So, when the quake hit, the building

on the first four floors columns and

shear walls failed. With no support,

everything else above was essentially

suspended in air, albeit for a minuscule

amount of time until gravity did its

thing and pulled the building back down

to earth.

The professor points out that from floor

five and up, we can see the an external

white precast

wall fall uniformly and that the shear

walls flanking it also appeared not to

deform. Hinting that these elements

falling together had not failed. Again,

pointing the failure

at the first four floors. Of course,

when each floor crashed into the ground,

they did actually eventually deform.

But, the evidence is compelling that the

failure started in the lower section of

the building.

The failure occurred at the rear of the

building at the shear wall core, again

showing

the shear walls to be inadequate. Once

the concrete had been pulverized, the

columns at the front of the building had

no chance to hold up the structure's

weight.

So, it is also would yield some criminal

cases. And by the end of 2025, 23

individuals, including officials of

Italian-Thai Development and the China

Railway Company, have been indicted with

charges including, but not limited to,

gross negligence causing death, forgery,

and building violations. However, the

cases against these individuals and

companies are still being battled over.

Some of the defendants have been

released on bail as well. So, it'll be a

case of watch this space. Anyone in the

future knows the outcomes, please let me

know in the comments below.

But, there is more to come as two of the

companies would get into the spotlight

once again in January 2026

with the Sikhio train disaster, which

was linked to the Italian-Thai

Development Company Limited and the

China Railway Number 10 Company.

So, that's my video on the SAO building

collapse. It's going to be a five on my

scale. And this is what I've got for my

root cause analysis card. Do you agree?

Let me know in the comments below.

This is a Plenty of Productions. All

videos on the channel Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike licensed. Plenty

of videos produced by me, John, and

they're currently

currently

raining in wet corner of Southern

London, UK. And all that's left to say

is thank you very much for watching. And

miss the music, play us out, please.

>> [music]

>> Mhm. [music]

Mhm.

Mhm.

Mhm.

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