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Diversity Fail? All-Women Engineering Team Blamed for Collapse of Miami Pedestrian Bridge

Sunday, March 18, 2018


The all-women engineering team that designed the ill-fated pedestrian foot bridge at Miami’s Florida International University were highly touted for their advances in a field that is typically dominated by men.
But critics are pointing the finger of blame at the female engineers for design flaws that may have brought the bridge down.

Investigators are still on the scene of last week’s bridge collapse that killed 6 people and injured 9 on the FIU campus in Southwest Miami.

The investigation is focusing on the work done by a team of all-women engineers who were employed by one of the construction firms that designed and built the bridge.



Munilla Construction Management (MCM), the South Miami-based firm that designed the FIU foot bridge, has been sued multiple times for unsafe practices in the past.
In early March MCM was sued by a construction worker who was severely injured when MCM’s “makeshift bridge” at Miami’s International Airport collapsed.
MCM is a Cuban-American, family-owned Miami company founded in 1983 that employs more than 1,000 people in several states. The company is a federal military contractor for the U.S. Army and Navy.
MCM was awarded the $14.2 million minority contract to design and build the cable-stayed bridge. The company is well-connected in Miami politics and it promotes inclusion and diversity in the workforce.
According to Politico.com, Munilla Construction is “about as politically connected as they get in Florida.”
The lead engineer on the foot bridge project is a female, Leonor Flores, who is a graduate of FIU.

Flores led a team of all-women engineers and designers who oversaw the crews that built the prefabricated “instant bridge” by the side of the road using FIU’s own accelerated construction techniques.
MCM partnered with the FIGG Bridge Group, a Tallahassee-Based engineering firm, to move the massive foot bridge into place over 8th Street in just 7 hours on Saturday, March 10.

MCM hailed Flores and her all-women design team in celebratory social media posts on Twitter.com in the hours before the deadly collapse.
But critics say simple mathematics would have prevented the disaster in Miami.
Studies all over the world have shown that boys and men are twice as good at math as girls and women. The gender disparity in mathematics scores explains why there are far fewer women engineers than men in the world.

The FIU foot bridge was designed to be supported from above by a system of thick steel cables (see illustration) and a reinforced concrete center support column. But the cables and the center column had not been installed before the 950 ton, 174-foot bridge was moved into place over 8th street on Saturday.
Sen. Marco Rubio, who lives a few miles from FIU, rushed to the scene of the collapse and shared insider information that the cables were “being tightened” before the bridge collapsed.
It isn’t clear if Rubio was referring to the missing cables that were not installed on the bridge.
After the collapse, MCM stated the cables were not scheduled to be installed on the bridge until 2019. The company did not explain what temporary supports were being used.
MCM Construction deleted their @WeAreMCM Twitter account following the disaster. But the Twitter account is still cached on Google.com.


http://sandrarose.com/2018/03/diversity-fail-women-engineering-team-behind-collapse-miami-pedestrian-bridge/

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Some of the information in the OP is incorrect. I'm not referring to the "women" part.
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That women designers would be prone to put appearance OVER structure is no surprise, though.
Many women think that looks are more important than framework. They should not be frame designers!
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The errors I'm talking about are in this segment at the end:
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The FIU foot bridge was designed to be supported from above by a system of thick steel cables (see illustration) and a reinforced concrete center support column. But the cables and the center column had not been installed before the 950 ton, 174-foot bridge was moved into place over 8th street on Saturday.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who lives a few miles from FIU, rushed to the scene of the collapse and shared insider information that the cables were “being tightened” before the bridge collapsed.

It isn’t clear if Rubio was referring to the missing cables that were not installed on the bridge.
After the collapse, MCM stated the cables were not scheduled to be installed on the bridge until 2019. The company did not explain what temporary supports were being used.
MCM Construction deleted their @WeAreMCM Twitter account following the disaster. But the Twitter account is still cached on Google.com.

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The foot bridge was ABSOLUTELY NOT designed to be supported from above by a system of thick steel cables that had not been installed before the collapse.
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The "see illustration" references a picture with a tall pole with 10 "cables" splaying down from a vertical pole in the middle.
Actually those are TUBES, not "cables." And they are for ornamentation, not to support the bridge.
They are not primary strength members, but were only intended to add some stability in use with the moving loads of pedestrians and harmonic conditions. The first purpose is for appearance, so they could shine pretty colored lights at night on the finished overall design.
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The designers had claimed they were "reinventing the web truss." Looks like they should have done their first mock-up without the hazard of live traffic underneath.
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This is how women designers think: the lovely tubes look strong and looks are all that matters in their reality.
Well, surprise surprise.
In the real world, looks is not all that matters.
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Furthermore, those illustrated sloping members (tubes, not "cables") were not what was "being tightened" as your source claims, which is obviously impossible since they were not in place yet. How do you tighten something when it's not there?
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There are cables INSIDE the truss web members of the bridge which provide tension to the concrete web members, and the cables are not visible since they are inside the concrete. Those are the "cables" that were being tightened.
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A dash cam video from a vehicle that was in traffic approaching the bridge clearly shows that the failure of the span began exactly where the crewmen were working to tighten the internal cables. The bridge broke under their feet and the collapse spread across the roadway from there, killing 6 people instantly. They had no time to react. Plus, they were stuck in heavy traffic so there was no place to go, anyway.
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Here is a video that shows construction plans, section details beginning with the dashcam video (Juan Brown is a professional pilot who provides public service videos with construction engineering overviews for the everyday non-scientist):
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I read somewhere online that this is the second bridge designed by the group to fail.  

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Don't women always get three chances?  Third time's the charm?  Everything happens in threes?