Engineering Process Failure—Hyatt Walkway Collapse

Abstract

Was the collapse of the Hyatt hotel atrium walkway a senseless tragedy or a steppingstone in the betterment of the engineering and scientific endeavor? The collapse claimed 114 lives, leading to a great public and professional outcry and having a dramatic impact on the careers and lives of many fine professionals. The architecture and engineering (A&E) community in the United States began a soul-searching debate on issues as diverse as how project workflow is managed to professional responsibility and ethics. Fundamental errors were identified in the project interaction within the A&E group as well as the construction industry. This review provides a presentation of the demand-capacity ratio within elements primary to the failure and presents results of detailed inelastic analysis of the box girder-to-hanger rod connection. The collapse occurred simply because of the doubling of the load on the connection resulting from an ill-considered change of an ill-defined structural detail. How this error was produced, and how any minor additional effort might have substantially improved the connection capacity, is addressed herein.