Never thought I’d live to see this, but the State of Washington has just fired a high-ranked official for mistakes.
The story. The Washington Dept. of Transportation is building a new floating bridge to cross Lake Washington, costing multimillions of dollars. In order to save time and money, the design was done by the State, and presented to the contractor.
Well, there was a very tight schedule, and to save time the State design office cut a bunch of corners instead of saying “hey, you guys, this can’t be done on your schedule”. The result is that the concrete pontoons that float the bridge are all cracking badly, and are requiring retrofit costing more millions of dollars and completely busting the schedule.
This morning’s Seattle Times had a long article about this, reporting that the head Bridge and Structures Engineer had been fired, and another high-ranked engineer demoted.
This must be the first time in history that the State actually fired someone, particularly from the upper levels, for bad performance. Quite refreshing, actually.
Wow, the fact that someone high-ranked was fired is what’s really stunning me. I’d assume they’d just hang some peons out to dry, typically.
And this is a great opportunity to link to MC Frontalot’s song Floating Bridge, which takes about a minute and a half to explain the differences in bridge styles and assert the superiority of a well-made floating bridge.
The push from higher up to get it finished fast was the problem, and those higher ups aren’t being punished. While the particular higher up was correctly fired, he was one of the peons. Good bridges are built safely before on schedule.
Don’t quite agree here - while it’s true that somebody at about the Governor level was the root cause of the problem, one of the duties of a good engineer, particularly of one at that level, is to make sure that the requirements of a particular project are never such as to guarantee failure. He’s the expert, and if he accepts an impossible schedule, he’s to blame. The buck stops right there.
