Briefing: Rewards of failure – changes in codes, practices and standards resulting from structural failures

Structural failures can have serious and sometimes catastrophic consequences. If followed up pragmatically with deliberate effort, they can and often do result in ‘rewards’ to both the profession and society. One form of ‘rewards’ that derives from structural and construction failures is the improvement of codes, standards and practices. It is to the credit of our profession that failures have been used, and continue to be used, to improve design and construction practices. The approach is not just to pay up, rebuild and walk away, but often to delve, learn and improve. The author's intent is to bring awareness to the fact that welcome and beneficial changes in the design–construction industry have come about, and continue to do so, as the result of failures, and to urge that engineering professionals should press for change when warranted, and extract all possible benefits from failures. All of this is for the ultimate purpose of mitigating future failures.