November 8, 2013
Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse
On July 17, 1981, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City hosted a tea-dance party in its atrium lobby. Many people were in attendance, filling the lobby and two walkways that were suspended above it. One walkway connected the fourth floor and the other walkway connected the second floor. The aggregate weight of people standing on the fourth floor’s and second floor’s walkway was too high for the connectors to hold, causing them to break and drop the fourth floor’s walkway on the second floor’s walkway and then falling to the lobby. Due to the accident, 114 people died and over 200 people were injured. The hotel’s construction had been completed just one year before the accident occurred.
The cause of the collapse was the poor design that went into the walkways’ connectors. The connectors originally had a design that required a single rod system, but they were changed to have a two-rod system to simplify the assembly task. This caused the load on the connector to double which eventually caused it walkway to fall. The design was altered by the fabricators who were working with the engineers on the design team.
This case demonstrates different examples of conflict of interest. One in particular was the conflict of interest between the engineers and the owner (Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation) of the project. During lecture on November 4, Professor Scarlat asked if all firms were driven by profits, and in this case it seems like the owner was more concerned with the profits the hotel would generate than the safety of its structure. Ten months after construction was initiated, a portion of the roof collapsed due to failed connectors. An investigation was called in, but the contract dealt primarily with the investigation of the cause of the roof collapse and created no obligation to check any engineering or design work beyond the scope of the investigation and contract. As a result, the engineering team requested on-site project representation during the construction phase on three separate occasions however the requests were not acted on by the owner due to additional costs of providing on-site inspection. In my opinion, launching an investigation that re-evaluated the design of the failing parts would have been the ethical steps to take after the collapse. This step, however, could have delayed the construction of the hotel and driven up the cost of the project. Taking into account the fact that the Hyatt Regency was a client of the engineering team and the team was hired to provide a design given certain constraints such as time and a budget, is it ethical to follow your clients orders even though they may impose a risk on a person’s life? Who is accountable in this case (engineers for developing a weak design or the Hyatt Regency for not investing an on-site inspection).
I think the Hyatt Regency is at fault here. The engineers should do a full-inspection, and this only happens when the people in charge approve it. The engineering team did everything right; they asked to continue the investigation because they thought something might be wrong. This is what happens when you don’t listen to the engineers you work with. They did everything in their power, and the management turned them down. I would put the fault on the management.
This is a very interesting case. Did the engineers have full reign to check the entire construction? Because I am guessing that they didn’t link the roof collapsing with the floor collapsing. This may be two different engineering failures. In this case it may not be the fault of either Hyatt or the engineers who fixed it, but the original assembly engineers.
To clarify i mean the fault is on the plate of Haven’s Steel Company
Haven’s Steel Company changed the design of the connectors in order to facilitate assembly. Once the connectors failed, causing multiple deaths and injuries, the engineers denied receiving any notifications from the fabricators with respect to the design change. Documents were later revealed showing stamped approvals for the design changes from G.C.E. I find it difficult to pin the fault on the fabricators because they applied the design change after receiving approval from the engineers. I believe the engineers should have been more cautious before approving design changes.
Class discussion notes:
What is the responsibility of the engineering firm, in terms of interactions with the construction company? With the regulator?
Should engineers design for the worst case scenario? Is it sufficient to be in compliance by a “small margin” ie “barely meet regulations?” What do we mean by worst case scenario? How and who identifies what the worst case scenario is?
The engineering firm should have had better communication with the construction company/fabricators. From the article, it seemed like the engineers approved the connectors’ design change without realizing it.
I believe engineers should try to consider worse case scenarios when building something in order to prevent harm. Engineers should do everything in their power to imagine these scenarios, but an alternative may be hiring a consulting firm that can do it for them. The issue with this is that it will add cost, but it will also add safety. When I said worse case scenario in the presentation, I was referring to any ways in which your product can cause harm to others. For example, in this case, the worse case scenario was having a lot of people stand on the walkways at once. Another example could be a 3D printer being used to print weapons. How can the engineer develop their product to prevent it from being used in a way they wouldn’t want it to be used.
I think the responsibility goes to engineers who first designed walkway. When constructing infrastructure, engineers are subjective to follow the safety guideline, and perform full inspection before it actually open to public. For example, elevators would have maximum capacity of certain number of people, however, elevators are less likely to brick down when there are more people on the elevator than the stated capacity. Although this could eventually lead to potential accident, there should be regular inspection of whether this walkway is safe to hold certain amount of people.
I agree, there should be inspections on structures that have a maximum capacity before they are open for use. I also believe the maximum capacities reported to the users should be well understated in order to prevent any accidents if the structure is ever overloaded. According to the evidence presented in the article, it seems like the engineers are at fault in this situation. What I tried to address in the presentation was whether the engineers were responsible for the collapse if the walkways were loaded past their capacities’. The walkways were used for an entire year and no issues were faced. The night of the dance party differed from any other business day because of the number of people using the walkway at once. People were using the walkways to hang out and dance. I assumed the number of people on the walkways was well over the maximum capacity.
This is an interesting ethical question? I have read about this before, so I know very well. The engineers and the Hyatt Regency seem to be at fault here. Engineers were aware that there was a better way of doing it, but they changed it out of costs. Hyatt Regency probably wanted a cheaper way. Do engineers have a responsibility of warning people if there is reason to believe there’s risk? Of course. But the people in charge of the hotel should have addressed these concerns rather than putting the hundreds of lives in danger.
I agree that management could have done a better job at keeping their event within the people limit that was sustainable by the atrium lobby. Management could have planned ahead and not allowed people to use the walkways as dance floors. Management should be aware of the constraints of the building they work in.
I think it is inevitable to make mistakes since we are human being. But engineers could have done much better if they have a better management. I’m not sure if the engineer should take the responsibility of this case. since they probably only did one part of the whole project. it is more like a black-box design. They might intentionally designed a safe crosswalk, but they can’t control it since there only some people can make the final decision.
The engineers were in charge of the design, and they were not granted representation during the construction phase. However, the head engineer of the project inspected all of the connectors of the atrium after a portion of the roof collapsed, and reported them as safe to the hotel owner and the architects.
It just seems like there was a colossal lack of communication between the engineers and the builders. Haven made changes to the design and it seems like GCE just didn’t really pay much attention to the changes. There wasn’t a whole lot of oversight involved. Both parties seem to be at fault. The engineers didn’t really do a good job of designing the system initially and the builders made it even worse. Then in the aftermath, everyone is playing the “he said she said” game. Obviously someone is lying. I don’t know if the engineers could have predicted the load from a number of dancing party-goers, but it reminds me of the story of the library built on soft ground, but the engineers never took into account the weight of the books. Once the books were put in, the library began to sink. That story is a myth, but it depicts the engineers lack of foresight. I think better design and communication could have helped a lot.
From the article, it seems like there was a lack of communication between the engineers and the fabricators (the fabricators were brought onto the project by the contractors). When the case went to trial, the engineers stated that they never received any phone calls or notices about the change in the connectors’ design. Documents were later discovered with G.C.E.’s stamp of approval for the design change. The engineers should have paid more attention to this detail, but I also believe that fabricators shouldn’t change a design in order to facilitate the assembly of a structure.