Publications & Media

Speaking to a packed room at the 2024 Ohio Transportation Engineering Conference, Tom presented “Engineering Failures + Their Consequences” as part of the event’s ethics sessions. In this 2-hour presentation, Tom went through several examples of recent failures in engineering, their causes – stemming from mismanagement, financial constraints, decisions based on politics, etc. – and what some of the consequences were for those failures.

After discussing both the written and unwritten rules of engineering ethics, Tom began reviewing examples that spanned some of the most famous engineering failures throughout history, as well as recent instances involving buildings and bridges both in the US and international.

Using these examples, Tom reviewed where and how failures occurred and, going above simply discussing the consequences and fallout of these disasters, explained not only what we learned from these failures but also how they changed the industry’s understanding and implementation of ethics thereafter.