Zi Wei Choo Choo 1

504644028

ENGR 185EW

27 Nov 2017

The Collapse of Hyatt Regency Hotel

Abstract

On 17 July 1981, two walkways in the Hyatt Regency Kansas City collapsed, killing 114
people and injuring 186 people. During the structural design process of the building, there were
major design flaws and miscommunication issues between the engineers. This combination of
engineering and project management failures led to the disaster. Looking through a deontology
framework, it is apparent that the engineers committed ethical violations. They breached the
universality principle because they did not obey maxims about safety. Furthermore, they violated
the reciprocity principle because the miscommunication led to ill-informed decisions based on
incomplete design details. To prevent similar disasters from occurring in the future, construction
and structural design companies should implement independent safety inspections, responsibility
guidelines and structural support systems.

Problem Statement

As structural design of buildings become more complex and impressive, buildings have
become more unsafe. In addressing buildings safety concerns, the surveillance and inspection of
the design and construction process must be increased to avoid construction tragedies. In 1981,
the interior structure of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City collapsed. This engineering
failure was due to ethical lapses in the design process of the building and loose project
management. These failures can be analyzed from an ethical perspective using a deontological
framework. To prevent future incidents like the Hyatt case, independent safety inspections,
responsibility guidelines and structural support systems should be implemented by construction
design companies.
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Background

On 17 July 1981, two vertically contiguous walkways collapsed at the Hyatt Regency
Kansas City, killing 114 people and injuring 186 people (Goldberger, 1982). The construction of
the Hyatt Regency Hotel Kansas City began in January 1978 and completed in July 1980. During
the design development phase from July 1976 to summer 1977, Jack D. Gillum, the supervisor of
Gillum-Colaco Inc (GCE), and Daniel M. Duncan, a structural engineer, assisted the owner
Crown Center Redevelopment and Patty Berkebile Nelson Duncan Monroe Lefebvre Architects
to develop design plans for the building (Baura, 2016). The hotel incorporated a multistory
atrium with three walkways suspended from the ceiling by three pairs of hangars to connect the
second, third and fourth floors. The fourth-floor walkway spanned directly above the second-
floor walkway while the third-story walkway was offset by a few meters. The walkways were
each approximately 120-foot-long and weighed 32 tons (Robbins, 1985).

Having experienced material purchasing issues, Havens Steel Company, a subcontractor

of the project made a structural design change after obtaining GCEs approval. However,
although GCE were responsible for the engineering aspects in the project, they relied on Havens
to perform calculations for the new design. The firm also did not conduct full inspection of the
structural connections as promised. These miscommunication issues resulted in a structural
weakness in the walkway connections, which led to the disaster.
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On 17 July 1981, the day of the tragedy, around 2000 people gathered in the lobby of the
Hyatt Regency Hotel for a tea dance party. During the party, roughly 40 party-goers were
standing and dancing on the fourth walkway, creating a higher load than what the walkways
could support (Marshall, 1982). As a result, the fourth-floor walkway collapsed and knocked
down the second-floor walkway, causing both walkways to tumble down onto the lobby floor.
Besides causing hundreds of deaths and injuries, the incident held the owner of the building
liable and they had to pay settlements worth roughly $140 million (Murphy, 2014).

Today, there remain arguments regarding the long-term impact of the Hyatt Regency
walkways collapse. The hotel incident increased awareness regarding building safety and
ultimately led to a nationwide re-examination of building codes (NBS, 1982). Besides that, the
heightened awareness also resulted in significant changes in professional codes on management
practices for structural construction. However, the incident caused significant psychological and
physical pain to the survivors of the disaster. Among the survivors, some feared glancing
upwards when entering buildings, and others couldnt walk without the aid of crutches (Murphy,
2014).

Engineering Failure

The major cause of the accident was the design change in the steel rod-box beam
connection which harmed the structural integrity of the building. The steel rods which support
the walkways were passed through box beams where nuts and washers were installed, instead of
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the original design. This new design doubled the load on the upper support rod from 90 kN to
approximately 181 kN as it must support the total weight of the second and the fourth floor,
instead of a single walkway as per the initial design (Morin, 2006). However, had the design
changes not been made, the capacity of the steel rod-beam box connection would still be short of
the minimum requirement of load capacity (151 kN) as determined by the Kansas City Building
Code. (Luth, 2000) Besides that, the structural design was inadequate causing weak longitudinal
weld. As the dancers gathered on the walkways, the load was higher than what the connection
could support, and the rods pulled through the box beams under the weight of the dancers.

While the true case of the incident was design flaws in the structural members of the
walkways and support rods, several project management errors contributed to the disaster as we
mentioned earlier, allowing the fatal construction design to go undetected. Havens Steel
Company, a subcontractor of the Hyatt project who is responsible for steel purchasing, could
only find shorter steel rods than required and requested GCEs permission for a design change
from a single to a double hanger box-beam connection for the fourth-floor walkway. Duncan
approved the request for design change and assured the PBNDML architects that the change did
not impact the structural strength of the connections (Baura, 2016). However, it was later found
out that although Duncan claimed that he had performed a shear calculation, it could not be
found in the project documentation (Luth, 2000). In October 1979, the atrium roof collapsed
during the construction of the building and inspection teams came in to investigate the cause of
the collapse. In addition to newly contracted firms, GCE promised the owner to conduct a full
inspection on all the steel connections in the structure (Marshall, 1982). However, it was later
discovered that the inspection was not fully conducted and the structural weakness in the
walkway connections went undetected.

Ethical Analysis

Ethical analysis is a tool that can be utilized to justify moral arguments in analyzing a
situation. This methodology proposes an ethical framework to help resolve ethical dilemmas.
One of these frameworks is deontology which evaluates the action from the perspective of the
action itself to inform peoples actions. According to deontology, an action is considered
morally right or wrong based on a certain moral rule, independent of its consequences.
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Deontology is comprised of two main principles, the universality principle and the
reciprocity principle. The universality principle states that one should only act on a maxim that
can be applied unconditionally. Under this principle, the maxim must remain applicable to all
situations without raising any contradictions. The other principle, the reciprocity principle
underlines the importance of respecting the rationality of other people and not using them as
means or instruments. In other words, every human should have the right to make his or her
decisions.

Deontology can be used to analyze the collapse of the Hyatt Regency Hotel to determine
the ethical lapses that contributed to the incident. One of the ethical lapses in this case was that
the Daniel Duncan, the Hyatt structural engineer approved the design change from a one-rod
system to a two-rod system without verifying the soundness of the structural design. Although
Mr. Duncan contended that the Havens Steel Company of Kansas City which built and erected
the walkways should be held responsible, Judge James B. Deutsch found him guilty of ''a
conscious indifference to his professional duties'' (Robbins, 1985). He was ''subject to discipline
for gross negligence'' and violated the maxim "engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health,
and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties" (ASCE, 2007). This
code of conduct can be used as a maxim because it can be universalized; all civil engineers
oblige themselves to follow this general law when performing engineering duties. Mr. Duncan
misled architects on the strength of the box-beam connections and jeopardized the safety of the
public (Robbins, 1985).

Another ethical failure was the inadequate design of the box beam-hanger rod
connection. According to a report by NBS, had the change in hanger rod system not been made,
the box beam-hanger rod connection still would have been insufficient and could only support
60% of the minimum load required by the Kansas City Building Code. If the engineers would
design a structure without performing the calculations, they acted from the maxim apply less
rigid specifications if it saves time and energy. However, this maxim clearly cannot be
universalized because rules would be useless if everyone acts in this fashion. In this context, the
profession of structural engineers would also be rendered useless. Under all situations, the
structural engineer must perform calculations to determine the strength of the members and
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connections. If structural details were designed without any analysis, many buildings would
collapse due to insufficient load support. Here, the engineers failed the well-known maxim:
Better be safe than sorry. This maxim can be universalized because the safety of human lives
is the most important aspect for everyone. If the engineers were diligent enough to check the
calculations at the design stage, the disaster could be prevented, and hundreds of lives could be
saved. Furthermore, while Gillum failed to review the initial design and accepted Havens plan
without calculations, Havens misinterpreted his preliminary sketches as finalized drawings
without verification or confirmation. This miscommunication violates the reciprocity principle
because all parties in the design review process did not full information regarding the design
status and thus did not have moral autonomy to make informed decisions.

Besides that, the lack of a secondary support system could be seen as an ethical lapse in
this context. When designing the Hyatt Regency hotel, GCE international did not incorporate a
backup mechanism which would have prevented the walkways from collapsing. Although
identical incidents have occurred in the past, the structural designer neglected the possibility of
Hyatt Regency hotel structural failures. As per the universality principle, his act is considered an
ethical violation because he failed to take actions accordingly, considering the relatively complex
structural design of the building. If the engineer had looked at previous engineering disasters and
followed the maxim People should learn from their mistakes, the tragedy would not have
happened. In fact, Robert Silman, a New York structural engineer stated that the Hyatt Regency
should have a built-in redundancy in case something fails so that the walkways would only sag
when overloaded (Goldberger, 1981). Such a safety measure is one of the ways we are going to
discuss that could be implemented to prevent the re-occurrence of these ethical failures.

Recommendations

There are several steps that should have been taken by construction design companies to
prevent the incident. First, the Hyatt-Regency Kansas City hotel engineers should necessitate
safety inspections by independent engineers at certain stages of design and construction. If safety
inspections were conducted, the doubling of the load on the beams due to the design change
would have been detected. Upon detection, changes could be made to the cross-beams and it
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would have been improbable for the disaster to happen. The structural engineer could have
approved the design change for reasons such as saving time or money or due to
misunderstanding of the consequences, which, however, are not valid within the deontology
framework. By having an independent engineer to review the design and construction process,
the personal interests of the structural engineer will not interfere the analysis and decision
making.

Besides that, clear guidelines for determining final responsibility for a design should be
implemented to avoid irresponsibleness or miscommunication. With such a system, there would
not have been a misunderstanding between Gillum and Havens, and one of the two parties would
have been held accountable for performing the calculations. All parties should carry out assigned
duties at each stage of design and construction to ensure that there are no irregularities or
undetected problems. From an ethics perspective, this adheres to the reciprocity principle which
emphasizes moral autonomy. By putting in place guidelines and requirements, all parties will be
notified of the status and details of the design and construction process so that they have the
freedom to make informed decisions. Without such a guideline, who is responsible for ensuring
the safety of final designs? If we consider the codes of ethics for engineers, it may seem that the
structural engineer must assume the responsibility regarding any design change affecting public
safety. However, strict guidelines should be implemented so that all stakeholders of the Hyatt
Regency are responsible for a specific part of the design or construction process.

Third, a secondary support system should be implemented by structural design

companies. If the secondary support system were in place, the fourth-floor walkway would not
have collapsed but simply sag so that the people in the building could be evacuated immediately.
From an ethical standpoint, this observes the universality principle. The company should have
followed the maxim: Do not act in a way that will cause death or injury. It would cost Crown
Center Redevelopment more money to build a secondary support system but that would still be
lesser than the $140 million paid in settlement funds. Additionally, the hundreds of peoples lives
are a heftier price to pay. According to consulting engineers, the original design of the Hyatt
Regency walkways had not been fully stable thus secondary support system was needed to help
distribute the load more evenly. (Goldberger, 1981)
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Conclusion

The post-mortem of the Hyatt Regency Hotel collapse has demonstrated the significance
of clear communication and detailed calculations and analysis in the process of designing and
constructing a building. A miscommunication or design flaw in the construction process can take
away hundreds of lives and cause huge economic consequences. Due to this massive impact,
formal oversight needs to be implemented in addition to establishment of design responsibilities.
Any structural changes in the design or construction process should also be communicated to
relevant governmental bodies and to the public as soon as possible if any building structure
instability is detected. Since the aftermath, different measures have been taken to prevent the
reoccurrence of disasters in the construction industry. The institution of policy holding structural
engineers responsible for building safety elements by the American Society of Civil Engineers is
an example that can be replicated in structural design companies by holding different engineers
responsible for different design tasks (Robbins, 1985). Similarly, other measures should be
extended beyond government regulations and engineering society policies to companies within
the structural design and construction industry so that disasters like the Hyatt incident will not
occur again.
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Works Cited

Goldberger, Paul. DESIGN CHANGE CITED IN HYATT DISASTER. The New York Times, The New
York Times, 25 Feb. 1982, www.nytimes.com/1982/02/26/us/design-change-cited-in-hyatt-disaster.html.

Robbins, William. ENGINEERS ARE HELD AT FAULT IN '81 HOTEL DISASTER. The New York
Times, The New York Times, 15 Nov. 1985, www.nytimes.com/1985/11/16/us/engineers-are-held-at-
fault-in-81-hotel-disaster.html.

Murphy, Kevin. From the archives: Surviving the Hyatt skywalk disaster. Kansascity,
www.kansascity.com/news/local/article748398.html.

Baura, Gail Dawn. Engineering ethics: an industrial perspective. AP/Elsevier, 2006.

Luth, Gregory. Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities. Chronology and Context of the Hyatt
Regency Collapse | Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities | Vol 14, No 2,
ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%290887-3828%282000%2914%3A2%2851%29.

Code of Ethics. American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), www.asce.org/code-of-ethics/.

Morin, Charles R., and Chad R. Fischer. Kansas City Hyatt Hotel skyway collapse. SpringerLink,
Springer-Verlag, doi.org/10.1361/154770206X99271.

Marshall, Richard D. Investigation of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways collapse. U.S. Dept. of
Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, 1982.