No such list is really complete without the first rendition of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge :<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)</a><p>For reasons, which become immediately obvious, it was lovingly nick named "Galopping Gertie"
The list is missing the Hyatt Hotel Walkway Collapse:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Hotel_disaster" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Hotel_disaster</a><p>The contractor made a small design change to make things easier for themselves and ended up causing a bolt to hold twice the weight it was intended to hold. 114 people were killed and 216 were injured.
The first one is not a mis-measurement. They knew some of the platforms were not to the norm, and that they had to be adapted by RFF. The person who started the info to blame on the SNCF is linked to a region that doesn't want to pay for the normalization of the platforms.
I am surprised the Denver International Airport Baggage System fiasco (<a href="http://calleam.com/WTPF/?page_id=2086" rel="nofollow">http://calleam.com/WTPF/?page_id=2086</a>) did not make the list. It is one the greatest failures of this sort ever, and is often used as a case study of what not to do. The baggage system cost tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars and it never worked a day. For that price in the mid 90s we could have gotten a light rail system in the entire Denver metro area (one that is finally being installed now for a much higher price).
The nearly 300 metres high Citigroup Center[1] in New York had a change during construction:<p><pre><code> original design for the "chevron" load braces used
welded joints. But during construction, to save labor
and material costs, bolted joints were used instead
</code></pre>
Which led to:<p><pre><code> Wind tunnel tests with models of Citigroup Center revealed the wind
speed required to bring down the building; wind of this speed
occurs on average once in 55 years. The building has a tuned mass
damper, which negates much of the wind load.
If electric power failed, say during a hurricane, the damper would
shut down and a much lower-speed wind would suffice; wind of this
speed occurs on average once in 16 years.
</code></pre>
The joints were welded in secret.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center</a>
I think the more interesting point to note here, is BBC's toedipping into this type of listicle content.<p>In a recent internal report[1], BBC was suggested to be mindful of Buzzfeed's stragegy. To quote from the article:<p>>The report, commissioned by BBC head of news James Harding from Sir Howard Stringer, also said that the BBC's web presence lacks "character and personality" compared with younger rivals such as Vice Media and Buzzfeed.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/may/21/bbc-news-buzzfeed-digital-strategy-sir-howard-stringer" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/may/21/bbc-news-buzzfe...</a>
It's not really true that the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because of the metric/English mismatch.<p>The team knew well before arrival at Mars that there were anomalies in the location of the probe. Thanks to management incompetence quite similar to that which led to the loss of shuttles Challenger and Columbia, no course correction maneuvers, which could have saved the mission, were allowed.<p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course" rel="nofollow">http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-t...</a>
I present to you the norwegian entry caused by inaccurate calculations.<p><a href="http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/sleipnera.htm" rel="nofollow">http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/sleipnera.htm</a>
There's also the Citicorp Center:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_cr...</a><p><a href="http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/" rel="nofollow">http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/</a>
Reminds me of this joke. Apologies for any hurt feelings.<p>"A perfect world is where the British are the police, the Germans are the engineers, and the French are the cooks. A worst-case world is where the British are the cooks, the Germans are the police, and the French are the engineers."
Is the story about the Laufenburg bridge accurate? I would never have thought that bridge builders would have used altitude above sea level as a basis for building, instead of some local, direct measurement.
I always like to point out this little snippet about the MCO:<p><a href="http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/#MCO" rel="nofollow">http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/#MCO</a><p>Like several of the others, it was mostly a documentation and communication problem.
Monitorama hosted a great talk by Pete Cheslock about the Vasa warship project. Available on Vimeo here: <a href="http://vimeo.com/95284690" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/95284690</a>
toss in the Big Dig and that high speed rail in California if they ever intend to build it. Basically far too many transportation oriented projects get really over budget and suffer multiple design changes.<p>Recently France was chided for buying 2000 trains that were the wrong size. Even in this day and age of computer power its amazing how simple things pass by