The lawsuit against URS was due to their recent inspection and reporting work on the bridge, so no time limit involved. I would think the other action, against Jacobs, who bought Sverdrup and Parcel, the original designers, would be complicated by limitations.
I am sure URS's insurers are paying a big portion of this settlement.
URS has to pay unless they can squeeze it out of Jacobs. URS is a big company and can handle it - see below, quarterly net income is more than enough to cover this judgement. They may be self insured, which would mean that they pay all claims.
Associated Press
URS Corp. 2Q net income falls, disappoints
Associated Press, 08.10.10, 06:42 PM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO -- URS Corp. reported Tuesday that its second-quarter net income fell as the engineering, construction and technical services company faced tough conditions in key power, industrial and commercial markets. The company said it earned $61.9 million, or 76 cents per share, for the quarter. That compares with $95.1 million, or $1.16 per share, in the same quarter last year. Excluding one-time items in both quarters, the company earned 80 cents per share for the quarter this year and 73 cents per share in the period last year. Revenue slipped slightly to $2.25 billion from $2.3 billion.
This article in the Wall Street Journal says the insurers will pay. It doesn't name the insurance companies, but another article said the insurers are "from London and Zurich".
Mark me down for someone who isn't bothered by this one little bit. You have a 40 year old bridge, you're storing materials on it, doing a lot of construction activities, trying to maintain traffic on it and you don't check the original design?
We engineers spend too much time trying not to do engineering. It took investigators about 10 tan days to find the problem. What would it have cost URS to re-analyse the bridge?
This whole thing is pretty close to home, actually about ten miles to the bridge site. Between the attorneys and experts involved, on all sides, I have worked with or against just about all of them. And, I can drive a few miles in several different directions and see piles of evidence (bent steel) that we are now trying to figure out where to store for an extended period of time, while we continue the fight. In one case the local park board wants its river side park area back near the collapse site, it’s been a fenced off scrap yard for three years now.
This was most certainly a tragic event for our communities and state, and all the people involved, in whatever way. But, it teaches me something else also; we as engineers are not always perfect or infallible, we can and do make mistakes. We are in an increasingly dangerous business these days, not always of our own making. No one old enough to know the names of most of the actors would argue that they are anything but first class engineering outfits. I am not defending their every action either, but it does occur to me, ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I.’ We are all working in an environment these days that pulls us in about ten different incompatible directions. The state wanted the bridge to last another 10 or 20 years, and we didn’t want to pay the taxes for a new one right then either. Our sports teams needed newer stadiums first. The client most often asks about project costs for an outlandish design; the time table, we don’t know how many stories yet, but can we start the footings tomorrow; the limits of your liability and E&O insurance, and then your qualifications; and usually in about that order too. I have never had a client say we’ll gladly pay you more to make sure your calcs. and drawings are perfect before we start building, or that my inspection didn’t miss a thing. I have never had a client say we’ll gladly spend another 30% on the structure to add redundancy and make it safer, and are you sure all of the connections are sufficiently over designed for the future loads we will impose? But, I have had them ask me to eliminate beams and columns because they weren’t sexy architecturally, or they thought they could save some money for the travertine tile in the atrium. I have fought plenty of times about a design which was almost impossible to structure, but because someone thought the space or detail was sexy, the extra structural cost and difficulty was no problem then. They are often stretching the possible (nearing the impossible) as long as they can blame someone else if things go wrong. Then they quickly forget that we told them that wasn’t a real good idea, in the first place.
I really dislike using the word negligence because I think, the lawyers and the public want that term thrown around way too loosely. I can usually see several shades of gray, not just black or white. Alternatively, today we have way too many people calling themselves engineers, when they don’t really have the knowledge or experience, and are just computer jockeys who wouldn’t know if 6 or 20 bolts looks about right for that reaction, or even if that reaction is in the right ballpark. Because we can analyze and CAD almost anything these days, however crazy, does not make it good design and engineering or buildable. And, most of the time I don’t give a damn what the Von Mises stresses are, because way too many people using that term don’t know who he was or what it means. We are working way too fast, too complicated, too cheap (and I don’t mean inexpensive structures either) these days.
We have a vested interest, and we better start teaching the public how important our work really is to their well being, and how important their infrastructure is to their every day life. It shouldn’t be between bridges and stadiums; it should be between stadiums and do they want their toilet to flush tomorrow. That’ll bring the real priorities into perspective quickly. We had better get good experienced engineering judgement back at the table, not just the owners, bankers and attorneys. We are not just the deep pockets and the fault of the problem; when a structure which saw much more use than anticipated, and was being extended in its useful life for lack of funding, finally fails. I am not defending any of the actors involved here, they’ll have to fight that out, but what a waste of time, money and effort, when they could be doing something constructive. It seems we can’t be careful and thorough enough, but who is willing to pay us for that little extra effort or willing to give us the time to do it. Professional engineering is less enjoyable these days, our opinions and contributions are more and more just another commodity. And, more and more I am feeling that I am involved, not because my experience and judgement are valued, but because I am the insurer of last resort, just get it done. Buy the way, have you paid your insur. premiums lately?
Boy, it feels good to get that off my chest. Now I can go back to work earning enough to pay my next insur. premium.
Jed,
The thing is, they did reanalyse the bridge. They identified a lot of members as fracture critical, but never checked the connections, which were the weak link. I'm not bothered by it either. I think they got off lightly.
With you, dhengr. The day when the managers stopped accepting my word, and third-degreed my technical opinion, was the day when it ceased to be a joy to go to work.
Michael.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
If there is a saving grace in this structural collapse, it is that full information about the bridge design, reports of inspections and investigations before the collapse, and reports of investigations subsequent to the collapse are all freely available. Included in these reports is the work of URS which led to this settlement.
