How Architects And Engineers Behave When Disaster Strikes

Building failures are like detective stories. At first, no one knows who should be blamed.

1 minute read

June 18, 2003, 11:00 AM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen


"The Waltham-based engineering firm Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger was hired to investigate the Hyatt disaster, and Glenn Bell of that firm is now the leading expert on the case. What was wrong with that steel connection is a little too complicated to explain in a newspaper. Suffice it to say that -- as with almost all architectural disasters -- the error was not the fault of any one person. It was the result of a compounding of several careless errors, the kind of mistakes all human beings are subject to. That's what makes it so scary."

Thanks to ArchNewsNow

Sunday, June 15, 2003 in The Boston Globe

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