1981 — July 17, Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse, Kansas City, MO — 114

—  114  ASCE. The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse. 1-1-2007.

—  114  Carper. “Forensic Engineering – the Perspective from N. American,” in Campbell 2001.

—  114  Delatte.  Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers. 2009, p. 10.

—  114  Exponent Engineering and Scientific Consulting.  “Hyatt Walkway.”

—  114  Ogot, M., and Gul Okudan-Kremer.  Engineering Design: A Practical Guide.  2004, 323.

—  114  Petroski.  To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, 1992, 85.

 

Narrative Information

 

ASCE: “Situation. In July 1980, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, opened for business, boasting among its design features a multistory atrium with three suspended walkways-a fourth-story walkway spanning directly above a walkway on the second floor, with a third-story walkway offset by a few meters. One year after the opening, the walkways on the second and fourth stories collapsed under the weight of partygoers, killing 114 people in one of the most devastating structural failures in U.S. history in terms of lives lost.

 

“The collapse was traced to failure of the connections between the fourth-story box beams and the hanger rods supporting the second-story and fourth-story walkways. An investigation revealed that the original design sketches had called for the two walkways to be suspended by a single set of hanger rods threaded through the upper walkway box beams and terminating beneath the box beams of the lower walkway. Although that design proved to be in violation of Kansas City’s minimum load requirements, the primary cause of the failure was a change from the original design to a double-rod system, one hanger rod connecting the ceiling to the upper walkway and the other connecting the lower and upper walkways. This change had the effect of doubling the load on the upper walkway connections, resulting in a design capable of withstanding only an estimated 30 percent of the mandated minimum.

 

“The engineer of record attributed the fatal design flaw to a breakdown in communication. He stated that he had assigned supervision of the project to an associate structural engineer, who was not an ASCE member. As the engineer of record was responsible for roughly 10 associate engineers, each of whom supervised six or seven projects at a time, he acknowledged that he could not personally oversee every aspect of the design. Instead, he entrusted the responsibility to the associate in charge of each project.

 

“The engineer of record further contended that it was common practice in the industry for the structural engineer to leave the design of steel-to-steel connections to the fabricator. The original design provided in the structural drawings was intended only to be conceptual.

 

“When the fabricators found that design to be impracticable, they requested approval of the double-rod system by telephone. The structural engineer verbally approved the change, with the understanding that a written request for the change would be submitted for formal approval. This follow-up request was never honored. In fact, the fabricators had just begun work on the shop drawings when a sudden increase in workload required them to subcontract the work to an outside detailer. That detailer, in turn, mistakenly believed that the double-rod connection on the shop drawings had already been designed and therefore performed no calculations on the connection himself.

 

“The design documents were returned to the engineer of record with a request for expedited approval. He assigned review to a technician on his staff; however, the connections were not detailed on the drawings and the technician did not perform calculations on the connections. The structural engineer performed “spot checks” on portions of the shop drawings, and the engineer of record affixed his seal to the documents. The latter stated that he had not personally checked all calculations and had relied on the work of his project engineer and design team.

 

“Question. Did the engineer of record’s actions in placing his seal on design documents without verifying the soundness of the structural design violate ASCE’s Code of Ethics?

 

“Decision. “Canon 1 of the Code of Ethics at the time of the walkway collapse read as follows: “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties.” Category (a) of the guidelines to practice for canon 1 had this to say: “Engineers shall recognize that the lives, safety, health, and welfare of the general public are dependent upon engineering judgments, decisions, and practices incorporated into structures, machines, products, processes, and devices.” Further, category (b) in the guidelines for that canon read as follows: “Engineers shall approve or seal only those design documents, reviewed or prepared by them, which are determined to be safe for public health and welfare in conformity with accepted engineering standards.”

 

“The Committee on Professional Conduct (CPC) was not persuaded by the engineer of record’s argument that each person in the design process was responsible for his or her own part of the work. Finding that the engineer’s seal made him responsible for all elements of the structural design, the CPC held that the member had violated the Code of Ethics, and it voted to recommend to the Board of Direction that he be expelled from the Society. However, the board disagreed as to the extent of the member’s ethics violation, holding that the engineer had been ‘vicariously responsible’ for the tragedy ‘but not guilty of gross negligence nor of unprofessional conduct.’ It voted to suspend the engineer from membership for a period of three years.

 

“Space does not permit a full exposition of the circumstances surrounding the Hyatt Regency collapse. Readers wishing a more thorough treatment of this subject are directed to the following articles:

 

Gillum, J.D. “The Engineer of Record and Design Responsibility.” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 14, number 2 (2000): 67-70.

 

Luth, G.P. “Chronology and Context of the Hyatt Regency Collapse.” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 14, number 2 (2000): 51-61.

 

Moncarz, P.D., and R.K. Taylor. “Engineering Process Failure-Hyatt Walkway Collapse.” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 14, number 2 (2000): 46-50.

 

Pfatteicher, S.K.A. “‘The Hyatt Horror’: Failure and Responsibility in American Engineering.” Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 14, number 2 (2000): 62-66.

 

“Special thanks are in order to Paul R. Munger, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, for his contributions to this article.” (ASCE. The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse. 1-1-2007.)

 

Carper: “Many current failures, including some very costly and prominent incidents, are the results of flawed management and project delivery systems rather than technical considerations.  One such failure was the 1981 collapse of the Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways in Kansas City, Missouri – a tragic event that claimed 114 lives…”  (Carper. “Forensic Engineering – the Perspective from N. American,” in Campbell 2001, p. 1.)

 

EESC: “On July 17, 1981, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City was hosting a Friday evening dance party. Above the lobby, two walkways supported dozens of party goers overlooking the festivities. Suddenly the walkways collapsed, killing 114 people.  Exponent engineers sifted through the wreckage for four days and concluded that the collapse occurred when a welded beam which supported one of the walkways failed.” (Exponent Engineering and Scientific Consulting.  “Hyatt Walkway.”

 

Rabins: “On July 17, 1981, the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, held a videotaped tea-dance party in their atrium lobby. With many party-goers standing and dancing on the suspended walkways, connections supporting the ceiling rods that held up the second and fourth-floor walkways across the atrium failed, and both walkways collapsed onto the crowded first-floor atrium below. The fourth-floor walkway collapsed onto the second-floor walkway, while the offset third-floor walkway remained intact. As the United States’ most devastating structural failure, in terms of loss of life and injuries, the Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways collapse left 114 dead and in excess of 200 injured. In addition, millions of dollars in costs resulted from the collapse, and thousands of lives were adversely affected.” The hotel had only been in operation for approximately one year at the time of the walkways collapse, and the ensuing investigation of the accident revealed some unsettling facts, which are summarized in the case. “Due to evidence supplied at the Hearings, a number of principals involved lost their engineering licenses, a number of firms went bankrupt, and many expensive legal suits were settled out of court. The case serves as an excellent example of the importance of meeting professional responsibilities, and what the consequences are for professionals who fail to meet those responsibilities. This case is particularly serviceable for use in structural design, statics and materials classes, although it is also useful as a general overview of consequences for professional actions. The Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse provides a vivid example of the importance of accuracy and detail in engineering design and shop drawings (particularly regarding revisions), and the costly consequences of negligence in this realm.” (Rabins, et al. “The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse: A Case Study…”)

 

Sources

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse. 1-1-2007. Accessed 4-22-2019 at: https://www.asce.org/question-of-ethics-articles/jan-2007/

 

Carper, Kenneth L. “Forensic Engineering – the Perspective from N. American.” Chapter 1, in Campbell, Peter (Ed.).  Learning from Construction Failures: Applied Forensic Engineering.  Scotland: Whittles Publishing, 2001.

 

Delatte, Norbert J. Jr.  Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers. Reston, VA:  American Society of Civil Engineers Press, 2009.

 

Exponent Engineering and Scientific Consulting. “Hyatt Walkway.” Accessed 8-8-2009 at: http://www.exponent.com/kansas_city_hyatt_collapse/

 

Ogot, Madara, and Gul Okudan-Kremer. Engineering Design: A Practical Guide. Pittsburgh:  Togo Press, LLC, 2004.  Partially digitized by Google at: http://books.google.com/books?id=M5BWtQ-xjeUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

Petroski, Henry. Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering. UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1994.

 

Petroski, Henry.  To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.  NY: Random House, Inc., 1992, 251 pages.

 

Rabins, Michael, Ed Harris, Michael Pritchard, Lee Lowery. The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse: A Case Study  in Engineering Ethics. Texas A & M. Accessed at: http://www.engineeringpathway.com/ep/learning_resource/summary/;jsessionid=G1NLDLTTPPDV3ABAVRSSFEQ?id=946F9946-6B58-4C3A-A1A0-DE5C79B0EBAD