engineer/designer vs builder/laborer

[curtis rosche]

im writing a paper for my english class on the problems between the person who designs and engineers things without realizing what it will take to make their concept come true and the people who have to try to build that design. im doing google searches but i dont have quite the right search terms. and if you know of any example of times that this happened in history, please comment it. and example would be the conflicts between Charels Babbage and his machinist. Babbage wanted a machine built, but in order to do it machines had to be made just to make some of the machine to make parts. and in the end his first machine was never built due to fighting with his machinist.
any thing similar or anything would help.
thank you for your help. i know there are tons of cases of things like this out there, i just dont know of specific ones

[Matt Meiser]

Google Kansas City skywalk collapse. Short story is that the engineer designed a structure the steel company felt was unbuildable. The steel company proposed an alternate, which the engineer failed to run some basic calculations on. A year after the building opened, the skywalk collapsed, killing 114 people.

[John Aspinall]

I'm thinking of the fireplace kettle in Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece - Fallingwater.
In some stories, it's described as just "symbolic", but in other accounts it was intended for use.
According to the tour guide, the kettle was such a big thermal mass that it would take the better part of a day in a roaring fire before it would be hot enough.

This is a case of designer versus engineer.

[curtis rosche]

thanks for the help. these are great example. also, examples of designer to machinist on making individual parts. its kind of an open paper and run with it. but its a rather longer paper.

[Matt Meiser]

There's another example in Wright's headquarters building for Johnson Wax. IIRC there's a tower that's unusable because it's impossible to control the temperature and an office area with a roof that has leaked from the beginning.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Unclear how applicable, but, how about using furniture store employees who can tell you how nice it will look to design a work area. For me, this means relative to say computer developers and such. Typically you end up with say a single open area. In my case, it means that if I need to be on a conference call for another project, I interrupt all the people in the area. I will not bother to elaborate further unless you specifically request more comments regarding the issues, but I might prefer to do them by email.

[Bryan Morgan]

What about the Ford Explorer? Didn't Ford try to blame the problems tires exploding but then an engineer came out later and no, they designed a steering part a certain way but Ford said no and built it a cheaper way?

[Dale Cruea]

I used to build dies for an automotive company.
We ran into problems on a daily basis.
Engineers would design a die. But no way to get to the components of the die. Everything was enclosed in cast iron.
Also had an Engineer put a hole inside a larger hole. Hmmmm Nothing to punch out on the smaller hole.
Engineers have a lot of theory and should work ideas. They lack practical knowledge on how things work in the real world.

[curtis rosche]

I used to build dies for an automotive company.
We ran into problems on a daily basis.
Engineers would design a die. But no way to get to the components of the die. Everything was enclosed in cast iron.
Also had an Engineer put a hole inside a larger hole. Hmmmm Nothing to punch out on the smaller hole.
Engineers have a lot of theory and should work ideas. They lack practical knowledge on how things work in the real world.

know of any examples that i would be able to cite?

[curtis rosche]

if you can think of any search terms that would help too. i keep trying different ones but i dont seem to be hitting the words i need

[harry hood]

The references in Dorner's _The_Logic_of_Failure_ might have useful sources.

[Dan Hintz]

Richard Feynman tells a tale of his time in drafting class... one of the kids was proud he had accomplished a gear design with many many gears. After looking it over, the teacher said it was a great design... and it would work, too, once someone invented a way to put the axle of one gear through the middle of another gear (think spinning spokes). Amusingly enough, he mentioned that a few years later someone did just that... the spokes could separate to let the axle pass, then reconnected when it had passed.

[Larry Edgerton]

Google "engineering snafus". It has some interesting ones.

I have seen some engineering/arcitectural mistakes, but I am still working in the field so I will just keep it to myself for now......

Don't get me going on "Frank, I'm always right" From a builders prospective, and from someone that has fixed some of his ideas, and someone that strives to make homes comfortable for the people that inhabit them, I think he was an idiot. An opinion that many don't share, but some people like rap, so what the heck?

[Paul McGaha]

Google Kansas City skywalk collapse. Short story is that the engineer designed a structure the steel company felt was unbuildable. The steel company proposed an alternate, which the engineer failed to run some basic calculations on. A year after the building opened, the skywalk collapsed, killing 114 people.

I read the story on Wikepedia. Tragic. Original design was actually not code compliant, would only carry 60% of required load. The contractor change was worse in that it was only good for 30% of required load.

PHM

[Bryan Slimp]

There's a hotel/condo/skyscraper that was being built in Vegas that will probably be torn down and never finished. There is an argument between the engineers/architects and the builders. I don't remember the whole thing but it was a recent news story.

I googled Las Vegas building dispute. Here's a good link:http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/au...molish-harmon/