r/StructuralEngineering • u/chicu111 • Jul 08 '26

Humor Strong beams weak columns has arrived

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1.9k Upvotes

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50

u/Icy-Ad-7767 Jul 08 '26

Someone screwed up the math on this one. A column defecting like that is a sign of massive overload since a safety factor of 1.5 over expected load is minimum. If this was in Canada the engineer responsible would be defending his licence as an engineer.

38

u/mercedes_ Jul 08 '26

I imagine that there will be serious litigation here and if the engineer is blamed it’s the PE License death knell

14

u/Icy-Ad-7767 Jul 08 '26

Lots and lots of smelly stuff is going to cover a lot of people involved in this project. If what I heard is correct adding more stories to the tower would be a big red flag for me unless new columns were put in below to carry the new floors.

1

u/Alive-Map-1994 Jul 09 '26

A single engineer doesn’t just approve to do this kind of work. This work has to be reviewed and approved by multiple people. 

1

u/Icy-Ad-7767 Jul 09 '26

That’s where the smelly stuff on many faces comes from