Failure investigations and the

Sean Brady explores the differences between a good designer and a good forensic engineer. Clearly, the design process plays a central role in engineering design, but it also plays a role when structural failure occurs. For example, it may be required to rectify or replace the failed structure. It is also pertinent in legal disputes when there is a requirement to ascertain whether or not the original design was prepared with the reasonable skill and care required of a practicing engineer. In purely technical terms, such an approach may fail to identify the actual cause of a failure in situations of complex causation, and, in legal disputes, there can be serious ramifications because the clear establishment of causation is critical to establishing legal liability. The second issue is an overreliance on simplifying performance assumptions instead of physical evidence. This is to be expected given that design is an assumption-driven process.