This puts any of our challenges into perspective

[saveasteading]

The building failing in Manhattan. A failed column and lots of temporary support.

The developer describes it as a "construction mishap".

More accurately it looks like  a total bodge without site scrutiny.

 

Is that a steel column,  made from bits, with a ticky tacky plate pinned on as a junction?

It appears to have failed at top, middle and bottom (classic year one engineering fundamentals), which suggests to me... be very scared about the whole building.

 

 

[ToughButterCup]

Ahhhh, thats nuffin ..... 🙃

 

 

OR

 

 

Take your pick.

 

32 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

... which suggests to me... be very scared about the whole building.

 

Exactly, @saveasteading

I'm so glad  - in retrospect - that our two disasters were dealt with by a properly professional company. Because  they discovered more incompetence and rectified it - and here's the kicker ... for less than the original company were attempting to charge me. They were going to take me to court for non-payment, until I sent them the security video evidence.

 

Its an ill wind that blows nobody any good 

 

To your point  @saveasteading: I wonder how the repair in the first post was financed? 

[saveasteading]

3 hours ago, ToughButterCup said:

I wonder how the repair in the first post was financed? 

I think it said that the City was doing emergency work, because bits are falling off it into the road, and the whole thing could collapse.

Imagine the desperate shenanigans taking place to divest the company responsible from wherever the money is.

 

Meanwhile in Exeter we have a £31M school that's going to be demolished, having never been occupied because of the threat of collapse.  The companies have gone bust, so the state pays more than twice.

subsidence, missing bolts..... so who knows what else.

Does nobody supervise these days?

 

3 years since built, so I'm surprised to have only just heard of /noticed the story.

 

[Super_Paulie]

2 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

I think it said that the City was doing emergency work, because bits are falling off it into the road, and the whole thing could collapse.

Imagine the desperate shenanigans taking place to divest the company responsible from wherever the money is.

 

Meanwhile in Exeter we have a £31M school that's going to be demolished, having never been occupied because of the threat of collapse.  The companies have gone bust, so the state pays more than twice.

subsidence, missing bolts..... so who knows what else.

Does nobody supervise these days?

 

3 years since built, so I'm surprised to have only just heard of /noticed the story.

 

like the Gateshead flyover in Newcastle, they are demolishing the entire thing.

And closer to home, the National Glass Centre in Sunderland is about to get demolished, 25 years after it was built, pretty pathetic.

[Square Feet]

10 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Serious kudos (props? 😂) to the person that put the first acrow in there.

And the other nine as well.

[MPH243]

7 minutes ago, Square Feet said:

Serious kudos (props? 😂) to the person that put the first acrow in there.

And the other nine as well.

I agree kudos to the people involved in all the props going into the building. I don't think I would want to be in there, but I guess the risk of injury/death from collapsing is huge as surrounding buildings could go as well. 

[Nickfromwales]

9 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Imagine the desperate shenanigans taking place to divest the company responsible from wherever the money is

Imagine being the persons sent down there to install those props?!?!?!

 

They’d have had the 2-finger salute from me. Feck that. 

[ProDave]

I would love to know more.  New building under construction?  Old occupied building?  That post that has bent looks sure to have allowed what is above to drop.  How much above?

 

I wonder what the SE's insurance premium will be for designing a fix?

[saveasteading]

Just now, ProDave said:

would love to know more

It has been there for years as a corporate office block. Now seems to be a mix of offices and flats. It was on the BBC News website from where I pinched the pic. A clever person can maybe get a link from the pic. 

 

Ahh  This might be it https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c7vygmmdyr8o?app-referrer=deep-link

 

[saveasteading]

It's a column but supposedly experienced people are calling it a beam. Is that a US thing?

[saveasteading]

These temporary props will be supported on a beam, as the one above, which is supported by a column..... as the failed one.

Walk gently.

 

And these are empty spaces with previous  internal loads removed.

 

[ProDave]

Imagine if that starts collapsing.  That could be another 9/11 scale collapse (though without the casualties as the building has been evacuated)

[Ed_]

Quite an acheivement to buckle that column, it doesn't seem that slender.

Surprised that column can be totally lost without other damage being immediately apparent.

[saveasteading]

4 minutes ago, Ed_ said:

doesn't seem that slender.

It looks to me as if the column is not continuous but has a butt joint at mid height, then spliced ( very badly) and all concealed by sprayed concrete or similar.

As such buildings are normally designed in great detail, and fabricated offsite, to slot together I'm guessing there has been damage and a bodged repair.

[JohnMo]

4 hours ago, ProDave said:

SE's insurance premium

Think building has been there since the 70s, so for original structural engineer, not sure they would be liable, especially as they have added more buildings on top of the original.

 

Looks like a bodge splice, then covered in fire proof paint to hide it.

[Post and beam]

My worry would be what caused the failure and is it likely, or already present, on others.

 

[Gus Potter]

On 09/07/2026 at 09:25, saveasteading said:

The developer describes it as a "construction mishap".

What a belter of a photo!

 

Now funnily this serves as a good example, all be it on a smaller scaler, as what not to do if self building or extending your house. I make some points.

 

11 hours ago, saveasteading said:

It's a column but supposedly experienced people are calling it a beam. Is that a US thing?

It's debatable. Technically to me it looks like a Universal beam, if you look at the flange width cf the web depth.. it look looks a beam, a column is more squat in profile. 

 

I can see from the photo the beam has buckled perpendicular to what seems to be a heavily loaded transfer beam at ceiling level. 

 

My gut feeling is that either the designer has made a massive cock up in calculating the loads on the, now call it a column. More likely is that they have not understood the top and bottom connections. They may have designed them as pinned, but then inadvertently introduced a stiff connection or some off centre loading ( called an eccentricity) that introduces a bending force in the column and not spotted it. This extra bending force reduces the capacity of the column to carry load. 

 

But on the other hand the Contractor may have thought they know better and just gone off and done their own thing. 

 

My experience of Contractors / project manager is mixed, I used to be a Contractor myself. Some think they know it all, some are arrogant in the extreme (pride comes before the fall) some are sensible enough to just make a call to the SE, which I now am. 

 

Now the photo is of a big building, heavily loaded. But when I design houses, wall slappings for extension etc the loads are much less, but I design with much smaller steels, thus pro rata they are doing just as much work. The design is lean. 

 

But if you listen to your builder without checking you are taking a big risk, don't be swayed by bravado, a builder telling you they know better. At the end of the day if the builder changes the design in any way and something goes wrong their insurance won't cover it, and possibly your home insurance won't either. It also critically unsafe.

 

My advice is, if you want to deviate from your design drawings then call the designer, just lift the phone!

 

IT'S THAT SIMPLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

I wonder whether they could reliably locate the old drawings and calcs - might they have slimmed down the sections at the top of the building, perhaps during construction, not expecting that anyone would put on another 19 floors 60 years later. Also, do they ever produce as-built drawings after the fact for big commercial buildings likethat? Lastly, was there any reliable way of verifying the section many years later after the concrete was sprayed on? For all the beams/columns?

Edited 1 hour ago by Alan Ambrose

[SteamyTea]

44 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Also, do they ever produce as-built drawings after the fact for big commercial buildings likethat

I worked for an American company in the 1970s and very early 80s, the paperwork traceability was excellent, any amendments where logged.  When the service engineers visited sites, they only took the parts that were need for the individual machine.  This saved a fortune on servicing (import taxes on spares where a big thing back then).

I would not be surprised if there were updated drawings.

 

At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Ark gets put into a wooden chest and filed away in a Naval base.  That was American irony, and nicely done.

Edited 29 minutes ago by SteamyTea

[Gus Potter]

46 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

I wonder whether they could reliably locate the old drawings and calcs - might they have slimmed down the sections at the top of the building, perhaps during construction, not expecting that anyone would put on another 15? floors 60 years later. Also, do they ever produce as-built drawings after the fact for big commercial buildings likethat? Lastly, was there any reliable way of verifying the section many years later after the concrete was sprayed on? For all the beams/columns?

Unlikely there are any record drawings, photos, back then photos were expensive to take, gut feeling is that there will be no meaningful records. 

 

From time to time I work on old buildings, we add load, change the load pattern (the floors get loaded in a different way as the use changes). For me it is one of the most rewarding types of design to undertake. 

 

It starts with researching the history of the construction and what the site was used for before construction, anecdotal information, ground conditions and so on. It is hugely interesting.. the history, folk think SE's (the failure we see of the column) just do sums but we don't, there is much more to the job.

 

Frankly the maths are massively boring once you have done it a hundred times or more. What I find exciting and rewarding is the "detective work", the history, working out what has caused the failure I see. Then you need to convert that into say a report that a layperson can understand. 

 

The fun part of being an SE is the art and craft of design and detective work , but knowing you can "prove what you are saying". Now in all that,we at times need to exercise Engineering judgement, some of the maths are based on probability, some empirically based, but again these maths need to be presented often in a way that a layperson ( a lay person also includes most BC officers) can also understand. 

46 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Lastly, was there any reliable way of verifying the section many years later after the concrete was sprayed on? For all the beams/columns?

Yes there is. We can often identify historic steel sections. I have documents in my library that helps me do this. Once we have dated and potentially sized a section we need to look at the strength. As we go back in time the manufacturing process was less controlled and a bit dodgy cf modern terms. Thus we need to use a different set of safety factors for example. 

 

So yes Alan we can do it more often than not. I've attached a historic copy of the Dorman Long Handbook from 1906 to let all see the kind of things I look at. This is just one of the fun parts of my job, you can do the maths, takes time and study to learn this.. but then you get to be a historian.. a detective, when something goes wrong the person that can actually design a solution and keep folk safe. 

 

If any of you have kids, being an SE is not the worst job in the world! If your kids are ok at maths then they stand in good stead. For me the being an SE is about the art and craft of design. The best SE's are actually really creative folk, you need some thinking logic, the maths almost comes secondary. 

 

Dorman Long 1906 handbook.pdf

Edited 24 minutes ago by Gus Potter