CBC: Sask. engineer slapped with an 18-month suspension after designing bridge that collapsed hours after opening
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/engineer-18-month-suspension-bridge-collapsed-1.6936657
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/engineer-18-month-suspension-bridge-collapsed-1.6936657
He improperly designed five bridges, this is just the one that collapsed, starting the investigation.
Now he's prohibited from working on bridge projects for 5 years. I think that's prudent, he could have easily killed people.
Wondering if this was just due to negligence, or if there were other systemic issues that allowed or encouraged these design problems, like pressure from management, or improper reviews. Feels like a pretty big failure to not have this work checked by at least one other engineer.
Wondering if this was just due to negligence, or if there were other systemic issues that...
I find it funny that nobody (including the article) is discussing the chance that it's straight up incompetence.
Feels like a pretty big failure to not have this work checked by at least one other engineer.
Yeah, this is a very good point too. Where's the peer review on something that is so critical!?
In a 5Ys/RCA process, I always make it a point to focus on process failures pretty much exclusively… except when there’s malfeasance, negligence, or outright incompetence involved. This situation seems like one of those exceptional instances.
But there were clearly some process failures as well.
The client told him to cut corners. He acted unprofessionally by not refusing to do so. From an earlier report:
In response to the lawsuit, Gullacher and his companies agreed that they hadn't done a geotechnical investigation, but insisted that was at the client's request.
"The RM provided the instruction that no geotechnical investigation should be obtained as the RM was concerned about the additional cost and delay," says Gullacher and Inertia's statement of defence.
"Inertia admits that a portion of the bridge collapsed," the statement says, "but denies that its design or specifications caused the collapse and puts the plaintiff to strict proof thereof."
Inertia says the RM may bear some blame because it decided to forgo the geotechnical work. It also says that after the bridge was built, the RM "installed gravel on the bridge to a depth of 13 to 16 inches with an average depth of 14 inches, which far exceeded the specified load."
Both parties share responsibility here. He's incompetent and unethical and should not be allowed to continue to practice at all. The relevant professional bodies need to issue clear instructions, and strike off any practitioner that just shrugs and does what the client wants. (Yes, it is a problem in my entirely different field too.)
the RM "installed gravel on the bridge to a depth of 13 to 16 inches with an average depth of 14 inches, which far exceeded the specified load."
WTF, why the hell would they go and dump 16 inches of gravel on the bridge? That's an awful lot of weight.
Clearly this guy couldn't have stopped them dumping gravel after the bridge was completed, but allowing the client to save money on critical safety measures is inexcusable.
There's mention at the end that he lost his company. If he was just a one person consulting gig, that might explain the lack of peer review.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The association that regulates professional engineers in Saskatchewan has suspended Scott Gullacher for 18 months because he designed a bridge that collapsed just hours after it opened to the public.
Gullacher was responsible for the Dyck Memorial Bridge in the RM of Clayton, about 300 kilometres east of Saskatoon.
On Monday, the association released its final order related to its investigation into Gullacher's misconduct, including the bridge collapse — described in the document as a "catastrophic failure" — and other projects.
The association determined that Gullacher didn't operate in a "careful and diligent manner" on the Dyck Memorial Bridge, because he did not employ a site-specific geotechnical analysis and did not provide adequate engineering designs for the helical pile foundations.
The start of Gullacher's suspension is backdated to June 8, 2022 — the date he was ordered to stop practicing professionally in the province.
During the investigation process, Gullacher testified that he paid $250,000 out of his own pocket to repair the collapsed Dyck Memorial Bridge, according to the association.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good that this chap is suspended and probably blacklisted by now, but let's not forget that structures like this aren't simply designed by a single person and then put into production.
Other engineers will have checked the designs thoroughly to find errors and issues. Whomever signed off on his work should also be closely scrutinised.
If it turns out he someone got his designs built with no oversight, then I would say the issue runs much deeper. Is it incompetence on the part of the company? Or does it go further. How many other companies may also be slipping through the cracks with improperly tested structures, etc.
I worked for a structural engineering firm, and you're going to be disappointed about the dilligence and competence of oversight. It's projects like these that result in additional reviews and investigations, but civil engineering is one of those things that governments stop funding when it's working well.
Everyone forgets why they need inspectors and regulators and qualified reviews documented in triplicate. Businesses need to grow, after all, and these derned taxes and red tape are just gumming up the works. So everyone relaxes to the point where one overworked moron is responsible for the safety and structural integrity of six bridges in a remote part of Canada, and then one of them falls down.
In this case, they spent under $400k to build a bridge, and the engineer didn't even do a geotechnical survey for the helical piles. He also failed to provide welding details, but the eyewitness reports say that it looked like the ground under the piles gave way from below, which wouldn't be caused by imsufficient welds.