
He had visited the site four times before the collapse, he said at the time, telling The Miami Herald that his job was to make sure that the work was done according to schedule, “not that workers were using proper procedures,” The Herald paraphrased him saying. In 1997, he was the assistant director of building and zoning for Miami Shores, where the dog track was located. Prieto, 54, who has a master’s degree in construction management, has more than 25 years of experience as a building and roofing inspector in at least six South Florida cities, including Miami, Miami Beach and Hialeah. Prieto has not spoken publicly since the Champlain Towers South failure and did not respond to repeated requests for comment or a note left at his door. Though there is no suggestion of problems with his work, a city spokesman said, the review was being undertaken out of “an abundance of caution.”

Prieto was on leave for undisclosed reasons, and that it was reviewing the eight projects he had worked on in that city. Prieto has worked as a consulting building engineer since May, announced this week that Mr. With few clues yet as to what caused the collapse, experts expect investigators to look at a wide range of potential factors, including delays in acting on the consultant’s recommendations for repairs design or construction flaws any issues with subsurface soils and the possibility that some outside force - a vehicle that struck a post in the underground parking garage, for example - could have affected a key structural component of the building.Ĭities across South Florida are reviewing older high-rises along the seashore - notorious for its weathering effect on buildings - to determine whether any of them face potentially serious structural issues.

His reassurances to condo owners in November 2018 that their building appeared to be “in very good shape,” despite a consulting engineer’s concerns, are among the many things investigators are likely to review as they try to determine what led up to the June 24 failure, which left at least 18 people dead and more than 140 people unaccounted for.
