WestCon Tribune
JUNE 1999
JUNE MEETING
STANDARD OF CARE
Presented by Joshua Kardon, SE
Mr. Kardon is a practicing structural engineer with 26 years of experience, the last 21 years as principal of his own firm, Joshua B. Kardon + Company Structural Engineers in Berkeley. He is also currently a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where his dissertation topic is the standard of care of structural engineers. He has been a guest lecturer in undergraduate and graduate courses at UC Berkeley, and at Stanford University, on the topic of engineering failures, professional negligence, engineering judgement, and the standard of care. Some of the material in his paper is drawn from the manuscript of a chapter written by the author for a book on forensic structural engineering to be published soon by McGraw-Hill.
Mr. Kardon will introduce the subject with definitions of "error", "negligence", "standard of care", and "duty of the professional". These definitions are primarily taken from case histories and, as such, provide pertinent direction to our thinking and understanding as construction professionals. The standard of care is not a fixed "standard" in the way other standards are, such as the standards for sampling and testing concrete. The standard of care varies with time, locale and circumstances, depending upon the specific practice being examined, The actual determination being made by a trier of fact such as a judge or jury.
To best understand the determination of standard of care, Mr. Kardon will present case examples where performance relative to standard of care was in question:
- Steel frame design: The calculations were not adequate to describe the design intent of the structural engineer.
- Retaining wall design: Where the use of "canned" calculations and design approaches were provided by the vendor of the particular system.
- Foundation design: Management and control of information furnished by the soils engineer were questioned.
- Collapse of unreinforced masonry wall: Requirements for the general contractor to provide shoring and bracing plans and submit them for the review of the structural engineer of record were not done.
- Tacoma Narrows Bridge: Standard of care and State of the Art: The gradual acceptance of sequential minor errors and failures, accumulated and culminated in a major catastrophe.
- Hyatt Regency, Kansas City walkway collapse: Changes in the contract documents by the general contractor for constructability reasons.
- CitiCorp Building, New York City: The importance of a rapid response to the discovery of error and the fact that even non-negligent errors can be dangerous and very expensive.
- Collapse of lighting tower: Showing the necessity of timely communications of information and its significance in the failure.
- Bridge collapse and the duty to warn: Considerations of the extent to which the engineer was required to warn the occupants of immanent risk in addition to or objection from the owner client.
Questions and answers generated from the preceding case studies will follow. This is also an opportunity to bring up your own case studies and expertise in our forum to share with someone who has spent a great deal of time researching the subject.
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