The company that built accommodation at a cyclone-hit rail camp has told a WA inquest it used an atlas and a ruler to calculate a key wind risk rating at another of its projects.
The West Australian Coroner's Court is investigating the deaths of two workers at the Pilbara camp after it was struck by Tropical Cyclone George in March 2007.
Kitchenhand Debra Till, 47, and excavator operator Craig Raabe, 42, died as a result of injuries they suffered when the cyclone lifted their dongas from their footings.
The court has heard the camp had been given an inadequate wind region rating, meaning the units could not withstand the force of the cyclone. They had also not been sufficiently tied down.
The Building Code of Australia rating is based on a structure's distance from the "smoothed" coastline.
Rail Camp One, which housed workers building a rail link from Fortescue's Cloudbreak mine to Port Hedland, was about 90km inland, but it was incorrectly classed as being more than 150km from the coast.
On Tuesday, the director of family-owned building firm NT Link, Anthony Smith, told the court about a previous job in Kununurra, for which he used a standard Australian atlas and a scaled or triangular ruler to determine the distance to the coast.
"You take a guess as to where the smooth coastline is and you measure out from there," Mr Smith said.
When asked if that was not particularly precise, he replied: "I agree with that".
He said he did not engage a building surveyor to do the work, but admitted someone with that expertise could have done the calculation more easily.
Mr Smith also admitted his method left a margin of error, and the Kununurra project would have been "right on the edge" of two different wind region ratings.
On the Rail Camp One project, he said he had not read through the full scope-of-works document because he had been assured by a Fortescue employee and camp manager Spotless "that they were covering off on all aspects of the design".
The inquest continues.
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