[edger]

WRONG!!! Hyatt Regency was not designed by a Junior Engineer fresh out of school, it was so lousy, it had to be designed by a Pakistani PHD.

Civil, Structural, Mechanical Engineering have long been interesting careers that would provide a living but no real wealth. Now the regulators have gone berserk, so they may no longer be secure professions.

[alfa6]

IIRC one of the main faults in the Hyatt skywalk collapse was that the fabricator fudged on the installation. The plans called for a box beam suspended from a rod with a washer to help spread the load. Instead the fabricator used a pair of channel iron welded together, this resulted in a weaker beam than the box beam that was specified. Then to compound the error no washer or plate was used to help distribute the load forces where the nut met up with the bottom of the now welded beam. The result was that the washer pulled up through the welded joint resulting in the skywalk collpse that resuled in 110+ fatalaties and twice that number injured.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[El Sordo]

I know a structural engineer that was invovled in investigation. It's not too commonly known, but there is decent evidence that when the contrator made changes to the design he phoned the structural firm (contractor swore this in court, the firm denied it in court). The engineer that the contrator allegedly spoke with was a new kid. The kid signed off (again allegedly)on the change.

There were other failures, of course. The contractor was wrong to make such a change, the inspectors were wrong to not catch it. But the unfortunate young engineer played his part.