The Death of Common Sense I read in an Australian engineering journal that "because people died as a result of the engineer's decision to open the flood gates, there obviously was negligence." or something close to that effect.
What many (even educated judges) don't get with risk assessment is "if there is one failure, it does not mean the design was flawed." But evaluate the design and determine if changes are warranted; they often ARE NOT if freak outaying, unpredictable black swan events prevailed. If there are two failures (forbid it ever occurs) then SERIOUS evaluation for design negligence should ensue. Incidentally, the dam engineers in Australia were acquitted. Politics, unlike fire safety, is quite adept at making public assessments in favor of risk tolerance. It is sad that a worker lost their life in a hangar from an incident where a beam fell upon them. I understand the concern for falling sprinkler pipe on another possible casualty. But investigate cordoning off the fall area around man lifts, or investigate working at night, when occupancy in the hangar is reduced, I blame upper managment, who are paid big dollars to deliver just these sort of rationale and risk reasonable decisions. Scot Deal Excelsior Fire/Risk Engineering _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/listinfo.cgi/sprinklerforum-firesprinkler.org
