Remember the bridge that collapsed in Florida

[TaxGuyParticipant]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fiu-bridge-collapse-engineer-ignored-warning-signs-hours-before/ar-AACLWea?li=BBnb7Kz

Most of you probably saw this story a few years ago. A pedestrian bridged collapsed at a university in Florida. The engineers did a p~~~ poor job of building the bridge. The investigation into the collapse was just completed and apparently the engineers ignored warning signs just hours before the collapse. Warnings about huge cracks under the bridge and inspectors telling them that the bridge wasn’t safe. People died when that bridge collapsed. Of course the engineering company is denying all of it and saying they did nothing wrong, even though a pile of rubble would disagree.

Why am I bringing this up on this website? You know why because you remember. The engineering company takes pride in the fact that they are an all female company. They have discriminated proudly and most likely legally against men. Even though men are not allowed, by law, to discriminate against women.

So ladeez, how’s that working out for ya?

Order the good wine

[Anonymous 3]

The company already denied any wrongdoing. Good luck finding an “engineer” conscious enough to say the truth that place.

And since it is all women, there would be a mega pussy-pass, and nothing would happen… The dream of every company: total lack of consequences for dumb mistakes.

The guilty part? The inspectors that did nothing…

Men will pay for it. Female companies are the future.

[Knarley BobParticipant 2219]

I’ve been welding since 1978, and have a dim view of “engineers” in general. Mostly they are glorified draftsmen. Now enter a draftsc~~~, and things would really go down hill, or collapse.
Seeing as how it is never THIER fault, what would you expect?

OATHKEEPERS, not on our watch. MOLON LABE

[TwistParticipant]

“It was intended to be strong enough to withstand a Category 5 hurricane and last 100 years, the university said in a fact sheet.”

Nope.

Just nope.

The Patriarchy brought it down by driving too fast underneath it.

[The Black ScorpionParticipant 2142]

Designed by women and probably built by illegals.

What could possibly go wrong?

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover that it was not fish you were after. - Henry David Thoreau

[Mr. SpockParticipant 10907]

Somehow somewhere they will find a male that was involved and pin the entire thing onto him. Many people will remember this and the names of every one of the women that worked for that company should be made public. That way if they try to dismantle the company and form a new company under a different name everyone can check out their credentials and identify those POS’S and how inept they are.

Feminism isn't about equality with men, it's about leverage over men.

[FrankOneParticipant 1417]

The FIU bridge was designed by Men; the lead engineer of record was a 60 (now 61) year old man, W. Denney Pate, a registered professional engineer in 16 States, working for FIGG Bridge Engineers. So FIGG is certainly not an ‘all female company’. Where do you get that from? It is a woman-OWNED company.

As for Linda Figg, the OWNER of FIGG, she just inherited the company from Daddy. She may have an engineering degree, but she is a moron, a self-described ‘director of bridge art’ — read about her here: https://engrhof.org/members/linda-a-figg/

FIGG itself has designed adequate bridges for 40 years. But the FIU bridge was mis-designed. Which is why it cracked before it fell (that is opinion — it has not been officially determined, but I strongly suspect it will be by NTSB soon).

Taxguy writes: The engineers did a p~~~ poor job of building the bridge.

No, the Engineers did a p~~~ poor job of DESIGNING the bridge. NTSB has already determined there were design errors in the second investigative update https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HWY18MH009-investigative-update2.pdf

The second company that totally screwed up, was the one hired to CHECK the design calculations — Louis Berger. So they, too, are incompetent.

As for Ms. Figg, she’s overseen and presumably directed, the ‘wet phone’ (water damaged phone to hide evidence/texts/messages), doctored meeting minutes, etc and otherwise tried to reduce FIGG’s liability.

Of course, whether justice is done, is to be determined: Mr. Pate should have his engineering license revoked and go to jail for his handling of the cracks and failure to check the load calculations. Whichever engineer(s) did the calculations at Berger should face a similar fate. As for Ms. Figg, she should also go to jail for doctoring evidence. FIU and FDOT also should bear some responsibility.

FIGG did not build the bridge, that was a separate company, a contractor, MCM, which filed bankruptcy.

I’ve been welding since 1978, and have a dim view of “engineers” in general. Mostly they are glorified draftsmen. Now enter a draftsc~~~, and things would really go down hill, or collapse

I’m an engineer, and not a good draftsmen. But these engineers simply needed to do CORRECT structural calculations — which in the modern era, just means putting the structure into a computer and having IT do the analysis! And they couldn’t even do that right. The needed to check the loads did not exceed the strength of the members. Linda could then have ‘decorated’ the bridge however she saw fit, all on the taxpayer’s dime (it was a federal TIGER project, the TIGER taking a piece out of your ass, including the whole wallet, in taxes!)

Part of the cause of this was federal stimulus money and the desire to produce a ‘pretty’ bridge, instead of a simple, efficient truss structure with trusses spaced uniformly. FIU wanted a grandiose structure. That aspect of the story, has also not received adequate coverage.

OSHA also placed blame on FIU, FDOT, and MCM for not requiring Figg’s computations, including the recommendation to re-tension the PT bars (the immediate cause of the failure) to be peer-reviewed. But the initial design flaw, was the root cause.

[Anonymous 3]

FrankOne wrote:

The FIU bridge was designed by Men; the lead engineer of record was a 60 (now 61) year old man, W. Denney Pate, a registered professional engineer in 16 States, working for FIGG Bridge Engineers. So FIGG is certainly not an ‘all female company’. Where do you get that from? It is a woman-OWNED company.

As for Linda Figg, the OWNER of FIGG, she just inherited the company from Daddy. She may have an engineering degree, but she is a moron, a self-described ‘director of bridge art’

Most likely the lead engineer only signed the project. But now we have a man to blame!

Good to know that the other company involved declared bankruptcy, leaving the “feminist” company as unaccountable for the disaster.

Also worth noticing how fraudulent the publicity around this bridge was. Namely to promote the “women on STEM” agenda. Like this example:

Before the bridge disintegrated, the school and MCM shamelessly flaunted Flores and other female engineers to promote their diversity and inclusion agenda.

Hours after @WeAreMCM deleted a tweet showing a picture of Flores and her family watching the bridge swing into place, the company deleted its entire Twitter account — along with all the other false flag tweets suggesting women engineers played a role in building a bridge that once again divides a community.

[FrankOneParticipant 1417]

Clu: I’m a registered professional engineer. The lead engineer bears personal responsibility for the design of this project — it’s his ass on the line as far as liability.

I suspect Pate’s water-damaged cell phone, was due to FIGG not wanting NTSB to see damning text messages or other correspondence, internal communication, on how to deal with the cracks, and whether they were a safety concern.

If I designed this bridge, you can bet I would have been calling the secondary company to verify load calculations when I observed the cracking.

Leonor Flores is another moron. However, she had NOTHING to do with the FIU bridge project. She merely worked for the contractor who built it.

What it has come to is, any company elects to trot out women and minorities for photos ops.

[OgreParticipant 5863]

If there are more women in college than men then more women were on the bridge and died. This I’m good with.I

A bad bridge that falls down is a bad bridge that killed people. Whoever allowed that should be held responsible. No gender recently assessment required. You F’d up up, people died. Here’s your jail time.

I failed to realize in my youth that I was the prize. I was going to work. I was going to earn. Little did I realize that due to feminism, that no longer meant I had to share. Road soon, Desert after.

[EskimospyParticipant 841]

May the darling engineers of MCM and FIGG do us all a favor…build a bridge and then stand under it for awhile.

[Puffin StuffParticipant 24979]

Further proof that women cannot be employed in the building professions or STEM in general.

#icethemout; Remember Thomas Ball. He died for your children.

[Anonymous 3]

FrankOne wrote:

Clu: I’m a registered professional engineer. The lead engineer bears personal responsibility for the design of this project — it’s his ass on the line as far as liability.
I suspect Pate’s water-damaged cell phone, was due to FIGG not wanting NTSB to see damning text messages or other correspondence, internal communication, on how to deal with the cracks, and whether they were a safety concern.
If I designed this bridge, you can bet I would have been calling the secondary company to verify load calculations when I observed the cracking.
Leonor Flores is another moron. However, she had NOTHING to do with the FIU bridge project. She merely worked for the contractor who built it.
What it has come to is, any company elects to trot out women and minorities for photos ops.

I agree with you Frank. It is a heavy responsibility that lies in the shoulders of us engineers. People dont realise that if management forces an engineer to go in a certain direction, then its on the engineer’s head the responsibility for the consequences. Because according to professional deontology the engineer is the only one qualified to make a judgement. Management is not.

However it is also a screwed up world when management can get you fired if they dont have its way. Some times people start to compromise and facilitate.

The trend with promoting women and minorities leads to valuing people that have no actual value to that specific situation (like Flores) and disregard the ones that do (like Pete). Pete is only “discovered” when thing go wrong.

Did Pete screw up? Sure. Yet when there was a party going on, promoting Flores and the female crew behind the bridge, Pete was conspicuously absent and underappreciated. In those circumstances it becomes easy for a man to become lax and start doing a sloppy job.

That is why things are starting to fail. The competent people are being ignored, the incompetent or the irrelevant are being promoted. Eventually the competent ones get numbed and go along for the ride.

Like when Boeing decide to re-use a proven design, but adding new engines that made that design aerodynamically unstable. Was that an engineering decision? And the solution to that problem was to create a new anti-stal automation, yet they did not design the new system, but reused existing sensors and actuators that where never intended to be used for that purpose. Software engineers had to create a system that violated several safety considerations usually followed by such systems. Then training and procedures did not reflect these systems in order to keep selling the concept that training was cheap.
Engineers where signing these management decisions all the way to the accidents.
And the FAA approved the whole thing.

Yet look at Boeing’s promotion video about their development people. Behind the numbers reflecting the “brain credentials” you have a shade of 3 women. Because “future is female”… I am surprised Flores was not there.

So, there are lots of Pete’s in this decay of civilization.

[HermitParticipant]

You’d think $14.2 million would buy a better product.

The evil in women’s hearts leaves them no moral bounds as to inhibit them from descending to the lowest levels of darkness to acquire their self entitled desires.

[FrankOneParticipant 1417]

Clu: Unfortunately, right now we don’t know WHAT happened with management, other than, after the fact, Linda Figg tried to doctor meeting minutes and obstruct justice. Linda wasn’t promoted at FIGG; she owned it, she inherited the company from her father, Gene Figg, he started Figg in the late 1970’s. Clearly, Linda Figg is an unethical individual; how much of a role she had in the design, remains to be seen, as does whether she will be held accountable for doctoring the meeting minutes.

Keep in mind, FIGG is a specialist company — ALL they do is design bridges.

W. Denney Pate stamped all the drawings https://cdn2.fdot.gov/fiu/13-Denney-Pate-signed-and-sealed-FIU-bridge-construction-plans.pdf — we already know there were design failures, per the NTSB’s second update — specifically, an underestimation of loads.

As for Management, I have repeatedly in my career, advised Management that if they violate OSHA’s General Duty Clause to provide a safe workplace, they can potentially be held PERSONALLY criminally liable as the ’employer’. I then add that I once worked at a firm where just that happened.

As far as I’m concerned, Flores has NOTHING to do with this; she worked for MCM, but NOT on the FIU bridge project. As for the constructor, MCM, it was run by Jorge Munilla and his 5 brothers, he did have 11 women in management of 92. The manosphere sites need to get some basic facts right. What ‘all woman’ company are they talking about?

Flores is a moron — her statement sexist — implying men can’t design an aesthetically pleasing bridge. Reality is, women TEND to like to work with people, men TEND to like to work on things, but there are certainly exceptions. I’ve known good women engineers, albeit, damn few of them.

Pate, and the second firm that checked the calculations for ~$70,000, were in my view well-compensated. They didn’t do their jobs. We shall see if any justice is served. I predict Pate will be the scapegoat, Figg will get off scott-free, and the secondary firm, Berger, will also get off scott-free, but I could be mistaken.

The 737 Max is an interesting study in business considerations trumping safety and ethics. I’m fully aware of the lack of redundant sensors, inadequate training to turn off autopilot, and that Boeing charged a princely sum even for an indicator lamp to inform the pilots when the automatic system (MCAS) was invoked (this lamp, was an optional, ‘added’ feature, that only some airlines elected to purchase). The FAA essentially let Boeing self-assess the safety, this is all pretty well documented at this point. The business pressures to produce a jet requiring minimal pilot retraining, were great. From a technical standpoint, a complete redesign, would have been better, but due to the competition from Airbus and the enormous cost and lost orders due to time required to produce a completely new jet, that was abandoned. They set the nacelles forward so they could be placed higher, thereby reducing stability, so they could achieve the same ground clearances. Short-term thinking typical of public corporations.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about ‘diversity’ in Engineering. All I care about is COMPETENCE.

[Puffin StuffParticipant 24979]

FrankOne wrote:

I don’t give a rat’s ass about ‘diversity’ in Engineering. All I care about is COMPETENCE.

It should be the same in medicine but it is not. Medicine is a lot less scientific and more “feelings” based. Doctors will not do a mastectomy for breast cancer if it’s indicated but the patient refuses. Despite the fact that their sympbals of femininity is littorally killing them.

#icethemout; Remember Thomas Ball. He died for your children.

[sidecarParticipant 35837]

Anonymous wrote:

Female companies are the future.

Only for a short while until civilization collapses like that bridge.

[Author]

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