Undergraduate lessons from historical failures Available to Purchase

Details of an undergraduate module that uses failure-related case studies to develop awareness of the major lessons to be learnt from historical disasters are presented. Increasingly, professional civil engineers work on projects for interdisciplinary systems of growing complexity and innovation, with safety and reliability at the heart of contract, design and execution procedures. Knowledge of how industry manages risk is therefore very important in preventing collective amnesia, as systems become more complex and powerful. Integration of new technologies, leading to ‘smart’ and adaptive structures brings with it the obligation for civil engineers to have a broader appreciation of what might go wrong. To achieve this goal a module called Forensic Engineering exposes students, not only to the lessons to be learnt from failures in construction, but equally to those from disasters in the industrial sectors of aviation, chemical, marine, nuclear, offshore oil and gas, and rail.