Readers,

I found the following web site http://www.cssplay.co.uk to be useful.

The page "the holy grill" and an interesting example of how to replace
those dreaded frames with css.

Yours,

"The collapse of the ceiling structure began with the failure of a single steel hanger that held up the panels. The failure of that
panel set off a chain reaction that caused other hangers to fail and sent 12 tons of concrete to the roadway below"

Regardless of whether the single hanger failure can be traced to bad procedure or not following good procedure, no single point
failure should ever lead to a catatrophic event. Do a search on "factors of safety."

Gene Kim-Eng

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Lewicke" yahoo.com>

I've been reviewing several HATs for our company. All of our documents
are currently in Word, which are then converted to PDF, a very painful
process.

Before setting out to look for a HAT, we specified our minimum requirements as follows:

- Tool should take Word files as input with little modification required on the final content.
- Output formats required: CHM and PDF, at a minimum.
- There should be support for conditional output, at...

It would be nice, if the blame could be put on poor
documentation alone. Everything in the design was
supposed to have been reviewed by the general
contractor and by the state authority with oversight
of the project. It appears that the hangers were
rubberstamped by everyone without any engineering
review. This appears to have been an engineering
design error, rather than a documentation problem. It
is possible that there wouldn't have been any
failures, if everything had been done according to
specs and the specs met design requirements.

scroll down to "Was this event foreseeable?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse
an engineering boards with a discussion of it.
http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=159632&page=1

The problem with the whole project is that it was done
in ways that would maximize employment, rather than be
best for users and taxpayers. I expect that it will
have to be abandoned within twenty years.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So the Big Dig is reopening today after the documented inspection and
repair of over 3,000 ceiling hangers. Meanwhile an investigation
continues into where the blame lies for the improper installation of
two-thirds of them.

We've had threads in the past about the role of poor documentation in
significant engineering failures. What I'm wondering is whether that's
going to turn out to be a factor here. Apparently, the ceiling system
was an innovative design. So there would not be a pool of workers
experienced with installing these bolts. Was there training? What
documents were used in the training? Who was responsible for writing,
designing, testing, and approving the training documents? What documents
were provided with the bolts? Who was responsible for writing,
designing, testing, and approving the installation instructions?

Anyone in Massachusetts want to volunteer to stay on top of this story
and report here? It might prove interesting and instructive.

Dick
http://ampersandvirgule.blogspot.com/