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I realize that higher standards of fire and other safety measures make these systems more complicated, but you would think that with all the technology we have

I realize that higher standards of fire and other safety measures make these systems more complicated, but you would think that with all the technology we have today for planning, engineering, communication, documentation, modeling and simulation - that these types of fiascos would become rarer and rarer. I wonder if anyone has looked at large scale projects like these over the last 100 years and determined what implications (if any) technology has had in reducing these issues.

wlesieutre 11y ago
We have a lot of powerful software for building design these days, Autodesk's Revit suite being the big one. But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better. There are some classes of problems that it definitely helps solve, like keeping the structural engineer and HVAC engineer from design conflicts where a beam and a duct go through each other. But everything needs to be done yesterday, so I'm not surprised that problems that can't be automatically identified are able to slip through. > “The people responsible for technical oversight were saying, ‘We cannot do this within this amount of time,’ and Schwarz would answer, ‘I don’t care,’ ” he says. Pretty much sums it up. EDIT: There's no excuse for the exposed high voltage wiring alongside the low voltage alarm systems though, that sounds like a contractor screwed up. I don't know the German electrical code, but generally in the US anything over 60V is classified as "class 1" wiring and it goes in a conduit. Typically this is a grounded metal tube so that you can't accidentally pound a nail through it, and if anything shorts to the conduit there's a safe path to ground until overcurrent protection trips. And if for some reason you have lower voltage "class 2" wiring running in the same conduit, those wires (and whatever else they split off to) are now considered class 1, even if they're only low current 24V signal wires or similar. They can no longer leave conduit and go anywhere else, on the off chance that it shorts to the line voltage wires it's sharing conduit with.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  AFAIK as long as you're only carrying a couple of 230V lines (3x1.5qmm NYM-J and friends) you're fine to use plastic tubes or tack them onto the walls, but as soon as you're mixing in non-power wiring you're required to lay them in separate tubes.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Commercial construction or residential? Small residential buildings in the US get by with unshielded Romex wiring, but I'm pretty sure NEC doesn't allow it for commercial projects here. I'm on the lighting side of things, so I'm tangentially familiar with electrical requirements but I don't deal with them regularly.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better. Exact same thing in the arts field - not all clients of course, and I can't think of a recent equivalent to a fiasco of this scale, but the general trend is that clients feel when the cost of technology goes down so should other costs.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Swear to god, I've had inquiries come in that sat dead for years and suddenly it's "Please revise. I need the updated version tomorrow." Since email is 1000 times faster than shipping drawings back and forth, that means everything I do takes 1000th the time that it used to. Apparently.
rmc 11y ago
We have also upped our standards, and require safer buildings, less chance of fire, and in the event of a fire, less deaths. This is a good thing.
detaro 11y ago
From what I've heard from the official inquiry into it the fire system design was fine for the original plan. But then they pushed massive changes (original design had 2 stories of arrivals area below 2 stories of departure areas (or the other way round, not sure), they then changed that to a sandwich of arrival/departure/arrival/departure), and as the article notes didn't give time to let the architects actually do a redesign of all components. From that point on no full plan existed and people drafted up local redesigns as they became necessary, often not talking enough to other groups or missing the entire picture. IMHO it is a great example for structural failure of the organisation running it, being set up in a way that it couldn't properly communicate or force it's leadership to deal with problems. There even are reports that banks that had been asked to provide guarantees declined to do so after reviewing the management structure, because they thought it would be unable to react to problems properly.
willyt 11y ago
Construction is a much more fragmented and there is no standardised software or mature data interchange format. Unlike say, aerospace, where the client is the organisation that mostly designs and builds the thing and is a gorilla that can force all the subcontractors to use CATIA v4 or whatever. I've worked on mega construction projects and just getting all the stakeholders to agree on where the building is located in the coordinate space of the CAD system is a major pain...

wlesieutre 11y ago

We have a lot of powerful software for building design these days, Autodesk's Revit suite being the big one. But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better. There are some classes of problems that it definitely helps solve, like keeping the structural engineer and HVAC engineer from design conflicts where a beam and a duct go through each other. But everything needs to be done yesterday, so I'm not surprised that problems that can't be automatically identified are able to slip through. > “The people responsible for technical oversight were saying, ‘We cannot do this within this amount of time,’ and Schwarz would answer, ‘I don’t care,’ ” he says. Pretty much sums it up. EDIT: There's no excuse for the exposed high voltage wiring alongside the low voltage alarm systems though, that sounds like a contractor screwed up. I don't know the German electrical code, but generally in the US anything over 60V is classified as "class 1" wiring and it goes in a conduit. Typically this is a grounded metal tube so that you can't accidentally pound a nail through it, and if anything shorts to the conduit there's a safe path to ground until overcurrent protection trips. And if for some reason you have lower voltage "class 2" wiring running in the same conduit, those wires (and whatever else they split off to) are now considered class 1, even if they're only low current 24V signal wires or similar. They can no longer leave conduit and go anywhere else, on the off chance that it shorts to the line voltage wires it's sharing conduit with.

mschuster91 11y ago
AFAIK as long as you're only carrying a couple of 230V lines (3x1.5qmm NYM-J and friends) you're fine to use plastic tubes or tack them onto the walls, but as soon as you're mixing in non-power wiring you're required to lay them in separate tubes.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Commercial construction or residential? Small residential buildings in the US get by with unshielded Romex wiring, but I'm pretty sure NEC doesn't allow it for commercial projects here. I'm on the lighting side of things, so I'm tangentially familiar with electrical requirements but I don't deal with them regularly.
anigbrowl 11y ago
But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better. Exact same thing in the arts field - not all clients of course, and I can't think of a recent equivalent to a fiasco of this scale, but the general trend is that clients feel when the cost of technology goes down so should other costs.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Swear to god, I've had inquiries come in that sat dead for years and suddenly it's "Please revise. I need the updated version tomorrow." Since email is 1000 times faster than shipping drawings back and forth, that means everything I do takes 1000th the time that it used to. Apparently.

rmc 11y ago

We have also upped our standards, and require safer buildings, less chance of fire, and in the event of a fire, less deaths. This is a good thing.

detaro 11y ago

From what I've heard from the official inquiry into it the fire system design was fine for the original plan. But then they pushed massive changes (original design had 2 stories of arrivals area below 2 stories of departure areas (or the other way round, not sure), they then changed that to a sandwich of arrival/departure/arrival/departure), and as the article notes didn't give time to let the architects actually do a redesign of all components. From that point on no full plan existed and people drafted up local redesigns as they became necessary, often not talking enough to other groups or missing the entire picture. IMHO it is a great example for structural failure of the organisation running it, being set up in a way that it couldn't properly communicate or force it's leadership to deal with problems. There even are reports that banks that had been asked to provide guarantees declined to do so after reviewing the management structure, because they thought it would be unable to react to problems properly.

willyt 11y ago

Construction is a much more fragmented and there is no standardised software or mature data interchange format. Unlike say, aerospace, where the client is the organisation that mostly designs and builds the thing and is a gorilla that can force all the subcontractors to use CATIA v4 or whatever. I've worked on mega construction projects and just getting all the stakeholders to agree on where the building is located in the coordinate space of the CAD system is a major pain...