I know that most all of you have seen photos or videos of the 12 story building which collapsed in Florida.
I don’t watch much msm TV so I don’t know everything they are telling people. I do watch a channel for structural engineers and is very interesting, if you worked in structural engineering for decades, as I did.
The way things appear from the historical documents this building had design errors 40 years ago.
Over the years the building has been Surveyed by structural engineers, patched up by building contractors, and approved by the city, but the original design errors are buried well within the structure and were never addressed. It may be that they were not truly understood until after the collapse.
This building is owned by the people who live in it as an association and they had secured $15 million to rehab the building. Structural engineers drew Complete plans for the rehabilitation, they had been partially approved for work at the roof level, and contractors had been on the job with the structural engineer for about a month.
The engineer of record was on the roof of that building, with members of the design team and the rehab contractors, about 8 hours before it collapsed.
I have never designed a job that failed or collapsed, I never worked on a job that collapsed, and I have never been in a structure that later collapsed (to my knowledge.)
But as an engineer I would have been sweating bullets over this.
Since this building was designed over 40 years ago, it’s quite possible that most of the people who were involved in the engineering and inspection, are deceased.
Eventually, I think someone will come forward about detail and construction errors that were made four decades ago.
There is almost no reason to blame the original structural engineers for this collapse, as the construction situations and methods were well known at the time and had been for decades.
But this appears to boil down to mistakes in swimming pool and garage detailing, which allowed continual water intrusion into the structure where it was uncontrolled and causing corrosion.
I think the collapse will eventually be attributed to both minor long-term undermining of the mat foundation, and very corroded rebar which, caused concrete to crack apart and fail, at major column to beam connections in the basement garages.
I did see forensic photographs taken before the current rehab began, and clearly this building had lots of concrete visibly spalling away from columns and floors, and it had been patched unsuccessfully in many many places.
There must have been major spalling underground, that was completely undetected. Deciding exactly where it started could be difficult as under such pressure these connections can literally explode.
I don’t watch much msm TV so I don’t know everything they are telling people. I do watch a channel for structural engineers and is very interesting, if you worked in structural engineering for decades, as I did.
The way things appear from the historical documents this building had design errors 40 years ago.
Over the years the building has been Surveyed by structural engineers, patched up by building contractors, and approved by the city, but the original design errors are buried well within the structure and were never addressed. It may be that they were not truly understood until after the collapse.
This building is owned by the people who live in it as an association and they had secured $15 million to rehab the building. Structural engineers drew Complete plans for the rehabilitation, they had been partially approved for work at the roof level, and contractors had been on the job with the structural engineer for about a month.
The engineer of record was on the roof of that building, with members of the design team and the rehab contractors, about 8 hours before it collapsed.
I have never designed a job that failed or collapsed, I never worked on a job that collapsed, and I have never been in a structure that later collapsed (to my knowledge.)
But as an engineer I would have been sweating bullets over this.
Since this building was designed over 40 years ago, it’s quite possible that most of the people who were involved in the engineering and inspection, are deceased.
Eventually, I think someone will come forward about detail and construction errors that were made four decades ago.
There is almost no reason to blame the original structural engineers for this collapse, as the construction situations and methods were well known at the time and had been for decades.
But this appears to boil down to mistakes in swimming pool and garage detailing, which allowed continual water intrusion into the structure where it was uncontrolled and causing corrosion.
I think the collapse will eventually be attributed to both minor long-term undermining of the mat foundation, and very corroded rebar which, caused concrete to crack apart and fail, at major column to beam connections in the basement garages.
I did see forensic photographs taken before the current rehab began, and clearly this building had lots of concrete visibly spalling away from columns and floors, and it had been patched unsuccessfully in many many places.
There must have been major spalling underground, that was completely undetected. Deciding exactly where it started could be difficult as under such pressure these connections can literally explode.