Idiocracy Trifecta

[Cycle61]

But isn;t there liability in these decisions? is there some business gambit, beyond basic incorporation, that makes those who build failed projects NOT liable? What am I missin, here?

Big GC fails on big project, gets sued for a bajillion dollars, liquidates all assets, everybody goes and finds new jobs, and the clients are left standing there with a tilting high-rise and collapsing transit center.

 

[Removed 3]

the faulty beam is supporting the park up above. maybe there shouldn't be a park on top of a transit hub? nobody thinks, let's keep it simple?

i have been fuming mad all day about this. public safety is at risk here. that is nothing to sneeze at.


that leaning Millenium Tower issue should have been addressed before they went ahead with completing this transit hub. total money spent on doing it right, total stretch of time to complete the project safely should have been the emphasis.

 

[JesasaurusRex]

I guarantee this was down to greed. The specs were the specs. Somebody played "good enough" with the materials and "close enough" with the manufacturing. Then they tested a sample and it failed. So they retested and cherry picked to get a passing result. I've seen it happen a lot - but thankfully not in anything structural.

Man you ain't lyin'

 

[easter bunny]

Big GC fails on big project, gets sued for a bajillion dollars, liquidates all assets, everybody goes and finds new jobs, and the clients are left standing there with a tilting high-rise and collapsing transit center.

This. There's no criminal liability either since the manufacturing process (both the raw steel and the beam extrusion) are governed by an ISO standard and the facility is audited. I could write paragraphs about how that can be sidestepped. As long as there's a manual, an auditor, and a passing grade it's all good. Any metallurgy result can be made to pass as well. You can test 20 samples 100 times until you get a pass and all of a sudden it's all good.

 

[mlm]

They're proposing a giant rooftop park in the Valco redevelopment in Cupertino. I was always suspicious about the engineering. Seems like a fairly new challenge and I'll bet they haven't learned all the corner cases when it comes to design and load.

I worked next door to the BB Transit center for a couple years during early construction. Was looking forward to checking it out, but you have to wonder how long the park is going to remain closed...if not permanently.

 

[bruceflinch]

Not to belabor the point of poor construction, but Salesforce just paid the City for the naming rights to the transit center and tower.

 

[SFSV650]

that leaning Millenium Tower issue should have been addressed before they went ahead with completing this transit hub.

Transit Hub construction start: Q1 2012
Transit Hub above grade structure complete: Q1 2016
First reports the Millennium is leaning: Q3 2016

By your logic, you should not have gone ahead with your comment until I finished mine.

 

[CocoLoco]

This. There's no criminal liability either since the manufacturing process (both the raw steel and the beam extrusion) are governed by an ISO standard and the facility is audited. I could write paragraphs about how that can be sidestepped. As long as there's a manual, an auditor, and a passing grade it's all good. Any metallurgy result can be made to pass as well. You can test 20 samples 100 times until you get a pass and all of a sudden it's all good.

Hmmm...testing a material into compliance is a huge no-no in the ISO world I work in.

 

[Removed 3]

They opened the transit hub on August 12, 2018. Already were other issues that were observed and reported before today's closing.

There were potholes discovered on the walkway in the park after the public walked on it since the opening.

I am not in an argumentative mood, sfsv650

I did not anticipate any trolling posts to accompany my post so I apologize for not having all of the dates and facts straight before making a statement based on my gut reaction about my lack of confidence in the safety of this major project. And they discovered a 2nd crack today! Everything about it has the look and feel of a substandard, inferior final product. They're doing something wrong. If in reality, if it would take more than $2.2 billion and more time to do it right, the contractors and everyone involved with the planning should have fully disclosed that.

 

[Eldritch]

Why do you guys hate capitalism?

Government Mandated Union Labor is NOT Capitalism. That is the OTHER thing.

Yeah, I see what you mean, but in the middle of Earthquake Central, it baffles me, the Millenium Tower thing. We are supposed to be one othe leading examples in the world of dealing with seismic safety etc etc etc.

Well, I know a guy close to some of the pending lawsuits. It seems that the Tower honestly would have been fine with existing conditions, but it is looking more and more like digging out the Transbay Terminal did fuck them. That makes it a City Planning problem, not a Millennium Tower problem.

 

[Entoptic]

So what lesson did we learn? Don’t build heavy shit on mud?

 

[AbsolutEnduser]

So what lesson did we learn? Don’t build heavy shit on mud?

Nono. Did you even read the thread?
Just the previous post mentioned to you that building heavy shit on mud is not a problem. Other people are always the problem--when they are building right next to you.. ... if you have built in the mud in the first place.

 

[bpw]

Thing is, we had capitalism when we could build shit. Like Hoover Dam and stuff. i wonder if Oroville Spillway has cost more than Hoover by now? Kidding but...

PS. Maybe they could get that PR firm to convince us that the beams arent cracked, too!!! That's the ticket!

Post Great depression was the closest this country ever came to socialism, lots of those big projects where essentially govt funded make work programs to create jobs and the top tax rate was 63% with a hefty 50-70% estate tax on the wealthy.

 

[Climber]

There were Zero consequences for the major-league fuck-ups on the Bay Bridge....there will likely be Zero consequences for the fuck-ups on this project.

Without consequences, why should anybody not cut costs and not be certain of their designs/manufacturing/etc?

 

[Abacinator]

So what lesson did we learn? Don’t build heavy shit on mud?

All the other kings said I was daft to build a castle in the swamp, but I built one just the same! It sank into the swamp.

 

[CocoLoco]

Post Great depression was the closest this country ever came to socialism, lots of those big projects where essentially govt funded make work programs to create jobs and the top tax rate was 63% with a hefty 50-70% estate tax on the wealthy.

<cough>
I’m glad someone else thought this too.
<cough>

 

[mean dad]

I don't expect Salesforce towers to lean. These guys are building those as an ego trip. They have more money than god, and don't care how much they waste, so they can afford to pay for the Extra Stuff that overbuilds stability, etc. They don't care how much it costs. My best friend ran the plumbing for a significant percentage of those projects.

Every time I see the Salesforce Tower I'm incredibly disappointed at how fucking pedestrian it is. They could have really made a statement of design and instead went with sedate and boring.

...The park would be hard to account for, and they may have been pressured to reduce the estimated weight of it because of the exponentially increasing cost to build sufficient load bearing with linear increases in load.

With all due respect, I call poppycock. X amount of soil + top cover weighs this much. X amount of concrete weighs this much. X amount of people way this much.
Over build to ensure, and voila.

Also, having your engineers build to a lower weight because it's too hard to meet specs is (in my worthless opinion) the absolute last possibility. I hope like hell I'm wrong, but that would be seriously criminal malfeasance at least.

the faulty beam is supporting the park up above. maybe there shouldn't be a park on top of a transit hub? nobody thinks, let's keep it simple?

Weight is weight. Doesn't matter if it's a park or a parking structure or another 100 stories of concrete building.
There are thousands of structures in the world with vastly more weight on top.


Also, the leaning tower is a completely different issue. The material used has nothing at all to do with the stability of the high-rise being built with no solid foundation. There is no reason at all to delay construction on buildings in SF because of the MT issue...unless you're building a high-rise and you can't reach bedrock.





Never time to do it right, always time to do it twice.

 

[CocoLoco]

Also, the leaning tower is a completely different issue. The material used has nothing at all to do with the stability of the high-rise being built with no solid foundation. There is no reason at all to delay construction on buildings in SF because of the MT issue...unless you're building a high-rise and you don't want to pay to reach bedrock.

FTFY

Never time to do it right, always time to do it twice.

 

[Junkie]

Transit Hub construction start: Q1 2012
Transit Hub above grade structure complete: Q1 2016
First reports the Millennium is leaning: Q3 2016

By your logic, you should not have gone ahead with your comment until I finished mine.

It had sunk 10" by the time Transbay started doing any earthwork (2011). Not sure who knew, though.






The first crack is likely a design problem, although a weld problem may have contributed.

The second crack is a result of the first: it's in a beam next to it, which is taking more load due to the crack.

 

[Shaggy]

But plants like Brawndo.

It’s got electrolytes!