Kantian Ethical Issues In Construction

When bridges are poorly constructed, they may fail due to load they carry, collision by derailed trains or even by vehicles that lose control leading to catastrophic incidences. However, if bridges are well-constructed, the chances or injury are greatly minimized in the event of an accident. Discussed in the subsections are the requirements of AS 5100 standards in relation to cable-stayed bridges and include design requirements for bridges, bridge aesthetics, bridge functional requirements, bridge component design requirements and bridge construction

The report debates the Tacoma narrows bridge failure and the different theories of how it came about, using information about what type of bridge it is and the forces acting on it before and during the collapse. It also discusses ways in which the failure could have been avoided, from changes in the design to modifications to the bridge after its construction.

In the late 19th century, the transportation demands of Quebec and other provinces success in transportation like Montreal’s success in railways led to proposals for bridging the St. Lawrence River. Quebec Bridge has a long story behind it, a bridge that was proposed first back in 1852 but it was not complete until 1919. It collapsed two times in this duration once in 1907 killing 75 workers and second time in 1916 killing 13 workers. In this report I will emphasize on the first collapse.

In Washington, the Interstate 5 bridge, which crossed the Skagit River, collapsed last month. The damage of this accident included two cars broke and three persons injured. According to officials, the bridge fell into the river after the large truck hit a beam. The bridge had a risky condition called facture critical. The U.S has a lot of bridges; however, nearly two thousand bridges were built between the middle of 1950s and the 1970s, so those ones are obsolete bridges. In addition, back then, the government cut corners in bridge buildings to cost reduction. Although gas and diesel taxes attempted to allocate to restored the bridge, the government cloud not collect money enough to repair the bridge because people began to use efficient vehicle.

After the collapse of the dam, many independent investigators were hired to inspect the dam site for damages. They discovered that the dam was not constructed accordingly to the design specifications. According to reports they noticed that the dam width did not exceed 140 feet as it was specified in the design. This suggests that the bottom portion of the dam may not have been adjusted to be proportional to the height. During the initial stages of construction, cracks appeared on dam, however Mulholland did not seem to be concerned. When the dam was completed, Mulholland inspected the dam by himself without any support. Even prior to the collapse of the dam, Mulholland was notified of cracks along the dam in which he concluded to be safe. As a result, the dam collapsed and took the lives of hundreds to his poor judgement. Furthermore, deputy district attorneys discovered that there were changes made on the dam by Mulholland and individuals who worked on the project. Unfortunately, these changes were not properly documented, which the district attorney’s found it difficult to understand and complete the construction process. Civil Engineers must strive to be transparent in the design and execution of a project, but Mulholland failed to do so as a chief engineer. District attorneys could not obtain documents that they requested because Mulholland failed to record enough details about the construction process, which shows Mulhollands lack of leadership as an

The I-35W Mississippi river bridge also known as Bridge 9340 officially was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge which carried the Interstate 35W across the Mississippi river connected the downtown east and Marcy-Holmes. Its construction began in the year 1964, was finally opened in 1967. It connected the northeast of Metrodome on its south end and the University of Minnesota on the North end. The bridge was the boundary of “Mississippi Mile” downtown riverfront parkland. The north foundation of the bridge was near the hydroelectric plant built in 1988. The south abutment was in an area polluted by the coal gas processing plant. There weren’t any mentions of this in the failure investigations. The bridge was a continuous truss bridge that had a total span of 1,907 ft. It was an 8-lane bridge having a width of 113.3ft. and was 115 ft. high. It was designed by Sverdrup & Parcel to 1961 AASHO (American Association Of State Highway Officials) standard specifications. The construction contract worth more than US $5.2 million at the time, went to Hurcon Inc. and Industrial Construction Company, which built the steel trusses and deck. The piers were not built in the navigation channel instead the center span of the bridge consisted of a single 456- foot steel truss over a 390-foot channel being the longest span of the bridge.

The first people were the representatives from Holliday Nature Preserve that helped me design the new part of the footbridge. They went down to the worksite to get the blueprints out and more people came to help. After about 20 minutes of people showing up and taking their tools down to the worksite, it was finally time to begin construction. The repair will be extending the bridge 16 feet to the top of the river bank with three 16 foot beams. Luckily there were many adults that could help lift the heavy beams into place because the young scouts wouldn’t be able to lift them on their own. While the adults did all the heavy lifting, I had the younger scouts work on digging water bars into the hill to stop further erosion of the river bank. The task of digging a hole for a 2x4 didn’t seem like a problem for the scouts, so I went to check on the footbridge. Coming down from the hill where the water bars were being placed, I could hear all the power tools like drills and saws being used to construct the walkway connecting the bridge to land. After watching everyone work together and have a good time, I decided to help saw the floor planks for the walkway. For about 15 minutes of sawing and talking to the adults that were taking a quick break themselves, I felt that the footbridge was coming along exactly as planned and I went to check the scouts. I didn’t expect the water bars to take along time to dig and I was right

In 1919, a study was begun to see if it would be possible to build a bridge across the Golden Gate. Michael O’Shaughnessy was the San Francisco city engineer. He was in charge of the rebuilding of the city after the devastating 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of the city. O’Shaughnessy knew the need for the city to have bridges. Most said it could not be done and others said it could be done but “it would cost about $100 million to build it” (Barter 23). O’Shaughnessy and Strauss, both wanting the same thing, got together. After the two consulted, they figured the only way to bridge the channel was to use a suspension bridge.

According to Luth (2000) there were many opportunities throughout the construction and design phase for the design flaw to be recognized by the engineers and there should have been a better review system in place as the changes that were made were not properly reviewed by a structural engineer. This disaster could have been avoided if someone would have taken the time to make sure all the designs were safe and would work

The bridge was constructed of carbon steel, which tends to crack. Many cracks were found throughout the bridge among extensive corrosion. Upon investigation, it was found that the collapse was due to a defective eye-bar that experienced a cleavage fracture in the lower part of its head which was resulted from stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue. [26] Since the eye-bars were not designed to be redundant, failure in one eye-bar would disrupt the continuity of the suspension system. This disruption is what caused the bridge to collapse suddenly. The location of the flaw

Improperly designed welds on the cross bracing led to the failure of 3 of the bridge’s beams. Extremely cold weather and constant morning rush-hour traffic also added to the list of causes. This caused the bridge to buckle inwards.

The St. Francis Dam was open for use in 1926, following two years of constructions. The dam was built in order to give the city of Los Angeles, and various other areas within the region a source of water. Though the dam itself had good intentions, faulty engineering design, and bad construction ultimately led to the untimely collapse of the dam on March 12th, 1928. After extensive research by various local, state, and federal investigators, it was determined that engineers didn’t take into account or didn’t care for safety measures of the dam. Since the St. Francis Dam was so profitable, many people including non-engineering personnel intentionally ignored the obvious early signs that the dam was going to collapse. No one wanted to lose out on the economic prosperity the dam was giving. The dam itself was for the most part proven to be inadequate even before the dam itself collapsed. The personal who worked on the construction and the maintenance of the dam saw negative signs early on such as cracks in the dam, and leaks. Still, despite these obvious warnings, the engineers and personals ignored these issue. The negligence of these workers and their failure to report or take seriously the warning signs lead to the collapse. This dam disaster was extremely catastrophic, and lead to the death of some 431 people. After the collapse of the dam, many new pages of regulations and engineering code were implemented in order to prevent another collapse of this dam again.

Four months prior to the collapse, a similar design of bridge, also designed by Freeman Fox & Partners, collapsed in Milford Haven, Wales, killing four workers. Understandably, there was a lot of industrial unrest on the construction site of the Westgate Bridge, although workers had been assured by Freeman Fox & Partners that the design of the Westgate was perfectly safe, but was not supported by any relevant or sufficient calculations.

Prior of this time, most bridge design were based on trusses, arches, and cantilevers to support heavy freight trains. Automobiles were obviously much lighter. Suspension bridge design had been envolving into producing bridges of maximum grace, lightness and flexibility which actually was more suited for carrying lighter cars and not heavier train. Unfortunately, engineers did not fully understand the response of the suspension bridge design to these poorly understand forces. The second reson was due to the excitation of torsional mode. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built with shallow plate girders instead of the deep stiffening trusses of railway bridges, in which trusses allowed wind to pass through but plate girders, on the other hand, present an obstacle to the wind. As a result of its design, it was proved that the bridge was too light and unstable. And causing alloping Gertieaction which were driven by the wind were being experienced by the bridge.

“And Hansel said to Gretel; let us drop these bread crumbs so that together we can find our way home, because losing our way would be the cruellest of things” (The Tide That Left and Never Came Back: One Tree Hill 2005). The construction industry lost its way, over the years the industry has faced many accusations for undertaking in unlawful practices and performing unethical behaviour. This is detrimental to our nation as a whole as Australia’s growth and development is dependent on the performance and wellbeing of the construction industry. The industry is responsible for satisfying the needs of our ever expanding society by contributing to the growth of our economy, the creation of our infrastructure and improving the standards our everyday lives. To live up to these responsibilities the industry must understand the importance of the work it does and do it in a way that is ethically right, the problem is how do we determine whether the decisions the industry makes justify as ethical? Ethical practice in the construction industry “is not definable, is not implementable, because it is not conscious; it involves not only our thinking, but also our feeling” (Valdemar W. Setzer, 2006). The industry operates in both the public and private sectors which employs many people who all have different morals and values which influences the decisions they make and how they perceive them. This creates a rift in the industry as what is deemed as acceptable varies between person to person