Page 16 - Forensic Structural Engineering Handbook

SUGGESTIONS TO THE

INSTRUCTOR

In my over 40 years of structural engineering practice and university teaching I often
felt the lack of a practical reference on the practice and business of dealing with fail-
ures. When in the mid-1990s I embarked on the development of a full-semester uni-
versity course to study the investigation of structural failures, I realized that neither
the practitioner nor the student had one good book to consult. There were, and are,
many journal articles discussing the events, their causes, and lessons learned from
individual failures, as well as articles on the roles, qualifications, and ethics of expert
witnesses; there are a handful of very informative books discussing why buildings fall
down, what the mechanisms of certain failures are, what can cause failures during
construction. That is to say, in a diligent search one can find useful literature on just
about every aspect of forensic structural engineering. One could use one or a group of
these to be references for teaching an isolated area within the field of forensic struc-
tural engineering, but several of them would have to be acquired and assembled for a
comprehensive course.
After all, in order to learn to intelligently investigate the cause of a failure and sub-
sequently to identify the party(ies) responsible for it, the student has to have an under-
standing of not only loads, strength, and stability, but also has to learn about the
processes of design and construction, and even the prevailing business practices, in
order to recognize where, when, how, why, and by whom a cause of failure can origi-
nate. It goes without saying that thorough familiarity with the nature and consequences
of loads, and of the critical characteristics and vulnerabilities of structures of different
types and materials is the most basic necessity, but beyond that they have to learn, of
course, how to conduct the investigation appropriate to the case. Since nearly all struc-
tural deficiencies and failures create claims, disputes, and legal entanglements, the stu-
dents need to acquire at least some familiarity with the relevant legal process, and need
to learn how to work effectively with attorneys.
So, with a group of contributing authors I created the first edition of this book, pub-
lished by McGraw-Hill in 2000, in an attempt to fill the need for a comprehensive and
authoritative reference for guidance on forensic structural engineering, addressing tech-
nical as well as nontechnical and legal matters related to the investigation of structural
and construction failures. This second edition is an improved version of the first one. A
special feature of this book is its coverage in appropriate order and detail of the range
of the topics that are all necessary for the study and successful practice of forensic
structural engineering.
Along with a number of references that I require my students to consult, I have been
using this book as the standard text in the course, Forensic Structural Engineering, which
I teach at Columbia University in New York. While not a dedicated textbook—mainly
because of the absence of numerical examples and homework problems—the book has
proven to be a valuable, comprehensive and convenient text for the course which is a

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