A Few Thoughts On The Philadelphia Building Collapse
The building that collapsed at 22nd and Market Street in Philadelphia is nothing less than a tragedy. But now that the dust has quite literally settled, it’s time to pick up the
pieces and figure out what went wrong. However, it’s just not an easy thing to do. By the way, I kind of feel like Nostradamus by writing a post about Intra-Industry Ethics a month before this happened.
Like any construction failure I’ve heard of, the details are kept very hush hush and coming to a conclusion about what exactly happened or who to blame is darn near impossible. For a lot of reasons, the construction process involves several parties, from designers, to contractors, to city officials. Everybody gets a chance to hold the hot potato, so in the grand scheme of things, everybody shares a little bit of the responsibility. When things like this happen, everybody has a finger pointed in their face while they are pointing a finger at somebody else.
It’s shocking to me that the poor crane operator is the one holding the blame right now along with a charge of manslaughter. I saw a Fox News article titled, “High Crane Operator Caused Deadly Philadelphia Building Collapse, Police Say”. In a world where the word allegedly is used when someone is arrested after shooting up a moving theater, I was (once again) shocked at how quickly beyond a doubt blame was placed on the contractor – and worse, the crane operator.
Everybody needs to realize that a demolition project like this has a plan developed by a licensed structural engineer and it is then approved by the City prior to work beginning. This tragedy could certainly be the fault of the contractor, but could also be the result of poor planning. Without seeing the construction documents on the project it is impossible to even begin to talk about cause.
With that said, an experienced contractor does have an implied obligation to bring unsafe conditions to the attention of the engineer and building owner, regardless of what the plans say. And by the way, how do we know that didn’t happen?
In short, the only blame I can place in my mind is on ourselves. When I say ourselves, I mean the members of the construction industry as a whole. Yup, you and me. We’ve fostered a point the finger, ain’t my problem mentality, and it sucks. However, they’ll fight for years about this and lawyers will twist and turn the facts to the advantage of their respective clients, and by the time it’s over, reality will only be alive in the minds of the survivors that were present. For them, and the friends and family of the people who are gone, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is because, as much as I wish we could, we can’t change the past.
So go ahead and blame the contractor, blame the engineer, blame the inspector or the whole inspection process in City Hall. Your Building Inspector is always to blame if something goes wrong. But for once, perhaps we point the finger at ourselves and then we really start to make progress.
I know I’m asking for a lot and it’s tough to change deep rooted establishment, so in the meantime, just lay off the crane operator.
