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Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 08 20

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SFCharlie

SFCharlie

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CE3527 "Best guess, those column rebar dowels were painted red so people don't trip over them."

No, I don't think so, there are many just like them all around that basin that are not painted.
 
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Optical98 said:
Spartan and Markbob, regarding Red paint... if it does represent areas where remains were found.

Why are these 3-4 column (former columns) painted red? They are/were under what was the still standing part of the building.
Click to expand...

Separate the operational stages. USR, Forensic, Clean-Up. The marker type and color corresponds to what stage they were placed.
 
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Structural engineer Sergio Breiterman... seems to have had an aura of um insufficient reinforcement and failed design for waterproofing.
Coral Gables 1975 (later housed police and fire dept.) cracks discovered months after completion, missing rebar (half of what the design called for, in areas) and troubles with water, the building leaking... $700,000 on repairs. "Before role in Surfside condo that fell, engineer had hand in another building mess" article sans paywall.

Just when will Construction be accountable for the work they do, instead of the usual crap of expecting an engineer on-site making sure work is being properly done.
We can't babysit Construction and I see contractors don't want to pay for engineer's time on-site. In Canada they are wishy-wash about who is responsible, with both sides pointing figures at each other and the result is a legal crack. The FIU pedestrian bridge collapse also had that dynamic, and nothing's changed.
 
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But they didn't paint these --

ScreenHunter_449_-_Copy_jvxywr.png
 
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Oh, thought of something... those columns marked in red.... those were the ones used for the demolition 7/4/21.
Strong possibility, they wanted it to fall in that direction.

ac_-_Copy_ogwtax.jpg
 
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lucky555 said:
Just when will Construction be accountable for the work they do, instead of the usual crap of expecting an engineer on-site making sure work is being properly done.
Click to expand...

I don't know what orbit you operate in but in mine, what you call 'usual crap' is non-existent. We don't sit around waiting for the engineer to do inspections for us. If they want to come to the site and walk things they are certainly welcome, but inspections aren't on them, they are on us.

When all an owner cares about is the bottom dollar, and is willing to scrape their engineers' and contractors' budget absolutely dry, this is the result.

lucky555 said:
We can't babysit Construction and I see contractors don't want to pay for engineer's time on-site.
Click to expand...

Nor should they - the engineer doesn't work for the contractor, they work for the owner. If the owner isn't willing to shell out the amount of funding required for the engineer to do their job properly, that's an owner problem.

Similarly (not pointing fingers, just stating reality) engineers need to include the costs required for them to do their jobs in their quotes. It's become more and more frequent in the world I operate in for engineers to tack this on after the job is awarded, and owners are never happy about it. I've had to explain to more than one owner that the engineer hitting them with additional, not-previously-discussed costs to perform cursory inspections is not something I have control over.
 
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Ok here is a true story that Demented will appreciate perhaps more than anyone else. This happened in a nearby state to 'Because Florida'.

Oh_NO_loa7gu.jpg


Apparently the Sub's crew decided they could make life much easier by backing over the curb and gutter in order to load their tools on flat-bed. BTW, this was a very large 'multi-state' commercial subcontractor, so not a Long Ranger Outfit..

The PM for this project left for 20 minutes to bring a burger back, and the next picture is what he saw upon arrival....

Rocket_Scientist_jzfia9.jpg


Notice anything odd about the right front wheel??

Well when he inquired as to WTF, the foremen said she/he had decided the D-9 Cat Dozer strapped to the axle of the truck would just pull it right out of that hole....

How many folks here, know why this is a bad tow point??? I think the picture explains it very well. The detached leaf spring went thru radiator, along with lots of expensive damage to this truck....

I have tried to protect the guilty by masking over the Company Name and Trade....

So let me ask, do you think we have a 'Suspect Work Force'? I know this PM very well, and this would have never happen if he had been there. I imagine they thought they would get away with it, while he was gone?

Edit: And this truck is larger than a 14000 dually F-350 Truck.....

Edit 2: I have a picture of BIG ASS Winch Arm wrecker it took to get the Truck out of the hole and to the repair shop! The D-9 was Unsuccessful....
 
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Thermopile,

The wheel is all the way against the bumper.. they pulled the front axel?

Oh you said that... I was looking at the pic and thinking it looks out of joint so to speak.

It probably crushed that curb too.
 
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Optical98,

Yes that Sub had to do some concrete repair too after that stunt. Leaf Springs failed when Solid Front Axle was 'Yanked' by D-9.
Yes when pulling would not work, yanking was tried...... Truck had to be lifted out of hole....
 
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After a long day of being forced to make stuff not to print, I appreciated that very much.

The last incident report I wrote, which was nearly 5 years ago now because I've decided to sink back to the levels of the jack legs and coast through work being sloppy (Sloppy to me is +/- 0.035" in the world I come from), still baffles me.

I received a call on a Saturday. Two workers decided to show up to move a piece of machinery from an interior office, through the warehouse, and to it's new location in a newly built machine room. The workers were not authorized to do this work unsupervised. Had this work been supervised, a number of things would not have happened.
A 2 ton stamping press was jacked up with a car jack (It says 2 tons on the side, as well as Pittsburg)
Once jacked up, the workers slid a moving dolly under one end and lowered the jack.
They moved over to the other side and jacked the press up again with the car jack.
Both workers in sandals now proceeded to move the machine. One pushed, one pulled on the handle of the jack.
I'll give them credit, they made it about 60-70ft to the location where the press went before it slid off the jack, crushing a mans foot leading to an on site toe amputation because his foot needed to be moved to be able to move the press which was pinning him to a CMU wall.

I don't have time to screen shot them now, but if anyone has time to go through the compliance issues letters from the town of surfside, there's letters in there that show the permitting issues of the area, how unpermitted work is O-fuckin-O-Kay, and how much unpermitted work has been done on and in the building since the 80's.


Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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There's some expectation a PE is going to hawkeye every step of construction. It's not practical from cost/efficiency to stand around all day on site and is a myth that needs to be dispelled.

"...five engineering experts consulted by The Miami Herald said that as the inspecting engineer on the project {Coral Gables} one of Breiterman’s primary jobs would have been ensuring that all rebar was placed correctly before the contractor pouring the concrete around it. If it wasn’t there, he and the contractor were responsible, all five agreed."
"...missing rebar was a “common error, not a big deal. Somebody just didn’t put them in.”"

Do you need any qualifications whatsoever to construct with rebar? We've got Biff with a hangover building rebar cages, the Godfather giving instructions to save a few bucks? Nobody inspecting before the pour?
I'm just wanting clarity as the Miami Herald article is again putting it on the engineer for construction deficiencies.
 
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No qualifications required in South Florida for steel work in erections.

Edit: My first thought was someone drilling tension cables in a railing install. Been back and forth with this little industry here, and if you think damaged rebar or tension cables ever gets reported, think back to the FIU collapse.
My current supervisor, the man who puts his name on the "this shit is ok" paper, can't read a tape measure.

Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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Thats about it!

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good companies here, with a ton of good crews.

But,
This is nothing new. Construction is full of addicts too. No one knows if you're high or drunk when the supervisor is 200ft away in his little office not watching whats actually happening.


Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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If you need no qualifications to install rebar, then the work surely does need inspection. Breiterman agreed to inspect the job. It appears he did not. And then he signed a paper that said "everything's fine".

He didn't have to "hawkeye" the job day and night. He had to show up before the pour, look into the forms, and say whether the no-qualified personnel did what he specified.

He apparently did not say "Half the rebar isn't here!"

But half the rebar wasn't there.


spsalso

 
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