Cry me a river.
A Professional Engineer underdesigns a building, or a bridge span and then they collapse? You are damned right that they are held responsible for 100% perfection.
Does anyone expect to live forever? Do people really hold doctors responsible for this fact of life...
Does any reporter think they can never make a grammatical or spelling error in their entire career, much less an occasional factual error? Do any of their reader really hold them to this level of performance?
However, how often do you enter a building or cross a bridge and think to yourself "Will this thing collapse?" The general public expects that "100% perfection", nor does it consider the bar being set as "idealistic and unattainable" in any way...
dvwjr
A building collapse due to design failure would be comparable to the rathergate scandal in journalism. That is not something that you expect or accept from a professional in their field. But what I'm focusing on is the 'gotcha-game' that's played out. An engieer can design a stable, enduring building, but put in an underperforming ventilation system, or make the entry door more in a poorly planned location, or but in bathrooms that are too small. Little things that are annoying, but not catastrophic for the use of the structure. In that sense, nothing ever engineered is 100% perfect.