EG2401 Tutorial 3

10th September 2015

Anisha Mathew
Karunya Venkat
Tiancheng Li

Q1. Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse

Causes?

Design issues?

Overload?

a) Causes of the collapse

-) Change in the design due to constructional difficulties (design
error: overloading of beams for holding up the second and the
fourth floor walkways)
-) Lack of communication between Jack Gillum and Associates, and
Havens Steel (misinterpretation of preliminary sketches as the
finalized drawings)
-) Failure to detect the flaw in the design (placing of bolts in the
weakest structural point in the box beams)
-) Added weight of party guests

b) Type of accident
- Human error and negligence
- Factual error regarding the design
- Prevention of accident:
1. Prior to Construction Peer review, frequent meetings
and complete communication/understanding between
both parties, adherence to the given design
2. After Construction Maintenance Checks

Party responsible for approval of drawings

Engineers from Jack D. Gillum and Associates

Party responsible for ensuring that all

applicable building codes are adhered to The
Board of Professional Engineers

Party responsible for ensuring that construction

follows drawing specifications Havens Steel

Q2. Ford Pinto

a) Acceptable design in Engineering Practice?
- Because it was a conventional and approved design used then.
- Design: Gas tank and rear axle separated by only 9 inches
- However safety first was not considered

b) No, it wasnt sufficient as it still put human life in

jeopardy. Even though, risk-benefit analysis was taken
into account, it failed to address the value of human life
and focused only on the monetary benefit.
c) Management failure (Engineering design, even though
vulnerable to risks, was approved by the federal code)
d) No, its not entirely appropriate to the the cost-benefit
ratio as that takes into account only monetary benefits
and not the societal benefit. Also, it doesnt take into
account human and emotional characteristics which form
the basis of human safety before all.

Balancing Approach to Negligence?

The balancing approach assumes that if an accident has a very low

probability, and there is a cost associated with preventing it, a
defendant is not liable if he does not take precautionary measures.

Relates back to the Ford Pinto Case!

Q3. Drug Testing

Company A being a large manufacturer of medicinal drugs will pump in
large amount of capital into research, followed by in-house drug testing.
Implications of publishing unfavorable results in journals:
- Loss of face value in the Market
- Loss of customer trust
- Showing the wastage of huge amounts of money (into research)
Implications of publishing all results:
Additional implicit regulation on the research of drugs, leading to an
inadvertent increase in the quality of drugs tested and produced.

Consumers will be fully aware of the potential risks a particular drug

entails, regardless of how trivial the test results may appear. Details of
side-effects will be given.
For example: A certain drug after being tested has a 0.01% chance of
inducing harm to a fetus when consumed by a pregnant patient. The
above proposal would include this piece of information to all
consumers, thus ethical in right to information ( in agreement with
right ethics)