The Citicorp Building Repairs: A Tale of Engineering and Ethics

[mouser]

Nice long entertaining account of the secret mistakes and repairs in the construction of a skyskraper, and lessons in ethics for all of us who build things..

What's an engineers worst nightmare? To realize that the supports he designed for a skyscraper like Citicorp Center are flawed--and hurricane season is approaching...

http://www.predesign.org/citicorp1.htm

from http://www.gadgetopia.com/

[mrainey]

That's very interesting.  A lesson for all of us.

[cemole]

Good find mouser I really enjoyed it.

[Darwin]

Thanks Mouser! That was a great read - and spurred a happy hour of googling and wikipeida surfing...

[MerleOne]

Funnily enough, this story has apparently been used for the scenario of a TV show episode, namely "Numb3rs".  It's on http://www.tv.com/numb3rs/structural-corruption/episode/385365/summary.html.

Thanks for mentioning the real stor(e)y