Structural Collapse: Responsibility and Accountability

To publicize its newly opened nightspot, a major hotel instituted weekly "tea dances" in the lobby of the hotel. A local band played 1940s-era music while dancers competed in friendly contests. On a Friday night in July, the band was playing Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll" when two skywalks spanning the lobby of the year-old hotel collapsed. Sixty-five tons of concrete, metal, glass, and dance spectators plunged four floors to the sidewalk below, killing 114 persons and injuring 216 others.

The investigation after the collapse revealed that the collapse resulted from poor judgment and a series of events that, in combination, produced a disastrous result. The study showed a history of oversights, misunderstandings, and safety problems plaguing the 40-story, 780-room luxury hotel during construction and for months after its opening.

Mishaps aren't uncommon on big projects, of course. But this huge project, which was built on an accelerated schedule, encountered a series of accidents and near-accidents during construction. At one point the building's owner dismissed its general contractor and barred an inspection company from bidding on future company projects.

The hotel was erected using the "fast-track" method, a fairly common procedure in which construction proceeds before all drawings are complete. With a $40 million construction loan outstanding and all building costs soaring, the owner wanted the hotel up and open as quickly as practical.

Design changes are common on fast-track projects, making clear communications more critical than usual. The owners of the building had circulated a 27-page procedures manual explaining the proper channels for design changes and approved drawings. But the procedures weren't always followed, and other mistakes slipped in. Because some connections were misplaced on the drawings, for instance, workers installed a sweeping cantilevered stairway without fully attaching it to a wall.

The investigation found that the skywalks fell as a result of a design change made during a telephone call between the structural engineering company and the steel fabricator. Stress calculations would have shown that the redesigned skywalks were barely able to support their own weight, let alone the weight of dozens of dance spectators. However, court depositions of the two engineers who made the telephone redesign indicate that each person assumed it was the other's responsibility to make new calculations, and neither did.

Edward Pfrang, then chief of the structures division of the National Bureau of Standards and a participant in the investigation, says, "One thing that's clear after . . . [this] failure and a few others is that there isn't a clear-cut set of standards and practices defining who is responsible in the construction process.

1. Who was responsible for the collapse? Explain.
2. Identify several key time points at which the problem could have been corrected.
3. Is this a failure of planning, organizing, leading, or controlling?