Editorial: The Unspoken Messages in NTSB's Miami Bridge Collapse Report

The Engineering News-Record ^ | November 12, 2019 | ENR Editors

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

The last time the National Transportation Safety Board came down hard on engineering and construction was in 2007.

That year, the board delivered reports on the collapse of the I-35 Highway Bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people, and on a ceiling collapse in a Boston Central Artery tunnel that killed one motorist.

Both involved completed structures. With its final investigation findings, the board also made recommendations for new standards and procedures and quality control.

NTSB's report on last year’s Miami bridge collapse at Florida International University in mid-construction, which killed five motorists and one construction worker, has similar recommendations. But it also has stinging criticism of the structural engineer and of the performance of the construction team as a whole.

Of the many investigations the board has performed, chairman Robert Sumwalt pointed out, none has had as much finger-pointing.

Magnum Construction Management and its subcontractor on a design-build contract, FIGG Bridge Engineers, each accuse the other of making the fatal errors.

Once cracks grew significant, one might assume that on this singular project and design there would be a cohesive and effective crisis response.

What happened instead was passivity and deference to engineer FIGG, which failed to recognize the emergency.

[BunnySlippers]

Oh wow....if you see a story on that, it would be a bombshell. post it or send to me please.

[tbpiper]

Did they so their calculations with non-racist math?

[marktwain]

NTSB said each member of the team had an “implied authority” to shut the road to all traffic or require reshoring—not spelled out in contracts but as tangible as the tons of concrete above the passing motorists. None acted on that authority.

Obvious lack of clear responsibility.

One of the major pushes of the Left in the United States, is a push to remove as much responsibility for objective results as possible.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Under decades of the One Child Policy everyone wanted their one child to be a male. Millions upon millions of females were aborted.

No way China’s population can possibly skew female.

[Alberta's Child]

As a licensed engineer, I'm kind of disappointed that this article didn't address something that I'm starting to see as a disturbing trend in my industry. It's something I call "the complacency of resignation in the face of inevitable liability."

I'd describe it this way:

When you do a job that comes with great personal and professional responsibilities, your incentive to do it well diminishes considerably when you are in a position where you and your employer will be facing enormous liability even in the event of a catastrophic failure that is NOT your fault.

This is what our legal system has brought upon us. What is your incentive to do your job well when you can get sued into bankruptcy even if you do your job perfectly well?

I saw this firsthand with the "Big Dig" project and the aftermath of the fatal ceiling collapse a few years ago. I am very familiar with one of the engineering firms involved with the design of that project, and as a result of the litigation associated with that disaster they ended up paying a substantial settlement even though: (1) they did their design task perfectly, (2) they could document that they did their design task perfectly, and (3) they could prove beyond any shred of a doubt that one of the contractors simply didn't construct the project to the design firm's specifications.

I'll ask the question again in that context: What is your incentive to do your job well when you can get sued into bankruptcy even if you do your job perfectly well?

The answer is that there isn't much of an incentive at all ... which explains one of the observations made in this article: In the engineering business today, designing a contract to minimize your risk is more important than designing your project well.

[Travis McGee]

So what if some bridges collapse? Diversity Uber Alles!

[elteemike]

Not closing the highway while positioning of the span and failure to temporarily shore the bridge during is more than an “engineering error” or miscalculation, it is criminally negligent...

[AFreeBird]

I don’t blame the women per sé. There are and have been many competent, even stellar women in the sciences and engineering. I DO blame a PC culture that rewards contracts based on XX participation and PR viability.

Which got totally destroyed by this Charlie Foxtrot and did incalculable damage to the competent women in and entering those fields.

To all of those out there who want to carry the PC sword into battle; Be advised: it’s double edged!

[cpdiii]

“I saw an article that the design engineers responsible for the Miami collapse were all womyn.”

We have great women engineers of great talent. Something much deeper was at fault in awarding this contract to this particular group of engineers. Their engineering was most evidently very bad, their bridge fell down. I myself suspect political correctness and with absolutely no factual basis for this opinion.

I have worked in the medical sciences and the oilfield with women of great talent. I respect them. However if any contract is given that considers sex, race or religion one has already accepted to award the contract to an inferior bidder.

[Albion Wilde]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Albion Wilde]

“There’s never time to do it right. There’s always time to do it over.”

[Albion Wilde]

if any contract is given that considers sex, race or religion one has already accepted to award the contract to an inferior bidder.

As a woman professional, I was sometimes asked in an interview if I had registered as a "minority" contractor. It always pizzed me off. I would usually reply, "I want to be chosen because you believe I am the best person for the job. If I should be chosen by you, I'll let you know my status after we've shaken hands and before bill you for my deposit fee."

[Mr. Jeeves]

If I am not mistaken, the entire engineering team was female. Am I correct about that?

It might have been (claimed as) true before it happened, but now it's all the fault of this white male Denney Pate character...and don't you members of the general public forget it! :)

[NoCmpromiz]

PFL

[wardaddy]

Estrogenic engineering

[KC_for_Freedom]

This is the first time I have seen it presented this way. But it comes down to too many lawyers and too much attention being paid to spreading the blame.

Go back to the car accident. It used to be that fault was established — and sometimes fault was deemed to be a shared function. But we used to have clear cases where one party was at fault. (Hit from the rear, for example.)

But soon it became in part your fault if you were injured because you failed to wear your seat belt. Maybe the accident had a single fault driver but what if you were hurt more because you failed in you responsibility to wear the designated safety equipment? Eventually, lawyers worked out a system where it was almost easier to share fault than to try to settle on these issues.

With this new input, then doing a good job of engineering may not relate to dismissal of fault, after all, if you saw a problem, should you not be held responsible for not alerting authorities as to the problem?

Yeah, I see this, and I would like to go back to the days when those responsible were stood up in the chaos and forced to accept that these things happened because you screwed up.