A member of the informal Inquiry Commission investigating responsibility for the collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad Railway Station, Vladan Kuzmanović, a professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade, stated yesterday that there is a discrepancy between the construction logs maintained by the main contractor, the consortium of Chinese companies CCCC and CRIC, and those kept by the subcontractor, the Serbian company Starting.This discrepancy raises doubts about the credibility of these documents. At a press conference, Kuzmanović explained that the construction logs of the Chinese consortium began on December 13, 2021, while Starting’s logs date back to November 10 of the same year. “This means that the subcontractor, Starting, worked on the site for more than a month before being officially introduced to the project by the main contractor, essentially before the official start of construction,” Kuzmanović said. He also highlighted differences in the descriptions found in these logs. “In Starting’s construction log, there are no entries, comments, or remarks from the supervisory authority, whereas such records do exist in the logs of the Chinese firms. This raises legitimate concerns about the authenticity of these documents when they were created and who signed them,” Kuzmanović noted. Additionally, a review of Starting’s documentation revealed that the contractor was obligated to perform a structural analysis of the glass-covered section of the canopy. However, this documentation has not yet been made available, prompting questions about whether the analysis was conducted at all, Kuzmanović said.
