Effectively Responding to Structural Engineering Failure: Expertise and Cognitive Entrenchment

Abstract

Forensic structural engineering plays a critical role in identifying the cause of failure, providing advice in the immediate aftermath of catastrophic failures, and in some cases providing expert opinion in the event of legal disputes. Although many authors have addressed the challenges involved in training the next generation of forensic engineers and further developing the specialty of forensics, this paper examines how the fundamental nature of an engineer’s existing expertise can lead to cognitive entrenchment, and limit an investigator’s ability to respond to failure effectively. The paper argues that an experienced engineer’s