Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not much profit in failure.

You think they planned on the bridge failing? It worked for five days as planned.

[Anomalocaris]

This bridge doesn’t sound that expensive.  The budgeted cost is 9 million according to CNN.  Where I use to work a new bouncy cheap ass  cantilever steel walkway that can give people vertigo walking upon it and spanning only 4 lanes of traffic cost $3.8 million, while the collapsed portion of this bridge is only half of the entire bridge design and it already span 8 lanes of traffic, and the whole thing is less than 3 times more expensive.

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Not much profit in failure.

You think they planned on the bridge failing? It worked for five days as planned.

You mean it failed to fail for a whole 5 day.


I still think there is no evidence the basic design is unsound. It sounds like the procedure for installing it and testing it is the problem. The absence of the suspension cables, which presumably wasn’t meant by the designer to be purely decorative, probably had a lot to do with the collapse.

[Brian37]

The Accelerated Bridge Construction technique was apparently developed at FIU to enhance the safety of the work crews in building structures off site and then with advanced equipment, rapidly installing the structures in locations the public doesn't want blocked.  Erecting the bridge in place would have subjected workers and traffic to a large construction site on a busy street for however long it took to build it with the attendant problems with motorists gawking at the project overhead and having fender benders, dropped tools, lane blockages, temporary supports in traffic lanes, cribbing, protective barriers, etc.

As of yet, we don't know if the collapse is due to a design error, faulty materials, equipment issues, sabotage, geological issues under a pier, etc.  Jumping to 'profit motive' as an issue seems really premature now.  It looks like FIU wanted a really expensive bridge there, not a cheap one.

It does not matter. It still amounts to human failure, the bridge didn't design itself or build itself. If it was done right this would not have happened at all. And one of the contractors has had prior complaints.

Again, you are talking about 1 event and I am talking about our long term society being sold that cheap is better and rushing is better. Company CEOs and their management set the tone and if they don't set up a proper climate someone is going to fail trying to push things. It still amounts to an oversight problem regardless.

Again, my point isn't to end the private sector, just the same way Nadar calling  car designs dangerous back in the 70s wasn't demanding the end of the auto industry. It still took better regulations and the CEOs of those companies to set the climate to make safer cars.

It is the same reason you need wall street regulations, not to end the stock market, but to prevent crashes like Bush's.

It isn't enough to simply blame those below the top. 

Even in working in a restaurant kitchen, I can tell you there are times a cook, waiter or even me, a dishwasher, will rush, not because we want to always rush, but because of lack of staff and or supplies combined with heavy demand. When you work under those conditions, fights happen between staff. food orders get screwed up,  and or shit gets broken because you don't have the time to do something.

I worked at one place that only had 1 dishwasher during the day, sure it saved money on labor, but I always noticed the second shift would get screwed by that pile up then the 2nd shift cooks would scream at the 2nd shift dishwashers because they didn't have what they needed in pots and pans and plates. Then the customers would get screwed because management would have to come over and help until they got caught up and that slowed down the wait staff getting the food to the tables. 

 

You know why Apollo 13 made it back even with it's failure? Because there was lots of redundancy and protocol. The movie really is mythological making it sound like everything was made up on the spot. NO, the vast majority of protocols when the accident happened were put in place long before the rocket took off.

Again, my point isn't to demand the end of the private sector, my point is it is NOT always good to rush or go cheap. Whatever you build or design still has to have the redundancy and protocol and safety. Just like even a restaurant, if you are getting your food late or wrong, you cant simply always blame it on the waiter.

[vorlon13]

At this point I wouldn't even want to guess how the inevitable lawsuit(s) are going to parcel out responsibility for the collapse.  Still seems very premature to be crystal balling the outcome of something so distant in the future.  Even a design fault with one of the cranes in use could be the primary cause of the failure, and as far as I know, I'm the first to suggest that.

Hell, even operating the "Big Blue" heavy lift crane clearly outside of it's wind speed limits did not shield it's manufacturer from some share of the legal judgments for design faults from the Miller Park accident in Milwaukee that killed 3 workers.  And that took years of litigation to work out.



https://youtu.be/OBDJM13rJ-k