NTSB: Group-think and complacency helped bring down the FIU bridge | Opinion

The Miami Herald ^ | November 8, 2019 | Bruce Landsberg

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

A bridge-building disaster should be incomprehensible in today’s technical world. Humans have been building bridges for centuries. The science should be well sorted out by now — and for the most part, it is.

But the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the March 2018 collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge highlighted basic design flaws and a complete lack of oversight by every single party that had responsibility to either identify the design errors or stop work once it was clear that there was a massive internal failure.

We all know “what happened” here. But the “why” is more elusive. None of the responsible organizations had any intent for this tragic event to occur or to cause any injury or loss of life. Sadly, good intentions do not suffice for competence and diligence.

The highest priority now? To truly honor those who lost their lives that day, leaders must quickly implement the NTSB’s recommendations, including those issued to the Florida Department of Transportation, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc.

Engineering schools will use this as a landmark case study for years — and they should.

The engineer of record employed by FIGG was experienced, but his calculations were erroneous. Reflection on this event should go far beyond merely a technical review. The checks and balances that were required by FDOT and ASHTO were completely lacking.

[polymuser]

Gal got daddy’s business. Went for structure ‘looks’.

[Captain Rhino]

Thank you for the link.

I guess column inch restrictions or something prevented the original article author from actually incorporating real information.

[mewzilla]

More at this link...

NTSB’s FIU Bridge Collapse Investigation Finds Many ProblemsThe agency published 30 findings as part of its presentation on the bridge collapse’s probable cause

Call me cynical, but I'm wondering if this drip, drip, drip approach is intended to dilute interest in the final report.

[mewzilla]

Those thirty findings raise more questions than they answer...

[Alberta's Child]

In some cases the “drip” approach is normal. Usually the NTSB issues one report at the end of the investigation. But if the investigation reveals critical issues that may be relevant to other ongoing projects, they release interim findings to warn the public about similar situations.

It’s no different than an airplane crash investigation. If the NTSB finds that a failure of a critical component in a certain type of aircraft was a contributing factor, they won’t wait until the investigation is complete before taking action. They’ll issue an interim finding and take the entire fleet of aircraft out of service until that component can be fixed on all of them.