View of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge which collapsed five days after being installed over SW 8 Street-State Road 41 on March 15, 2018.
Days after the pedestrian bridge at Miami's Florida International University collapsed on Thursday, crushing several vehicles on the road below and killing six people, Governor Rick Scott ordered the state's transportation department to pause payments for the project until the cause of the incident is uncovered.
The news comes as officials investigate what went wrong with the new bridge, and after it was revealed that an engineering firm hired by the school had left a voicemail earlier in the week warning the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) of cracking on the north side of the bridge—a message that was not heard until the morning after the collapse.
'From a safety perspective we don't see that there's any issue there, so we're not concerned about it from that perspective,' Denney Pate, with FIGG bridge engineers, said in the voicemail, which FDOT released to the public, 'although obviously the cracking is not good and something's going to have to be, ya know, done to repair that.'
FIGG designed the pedestrian walkway, which was a connection between the FIU campus and the city of Sweetwater, while contractor MCM built and installed it. The transportation department was involved from a logistical standpoint, dispensing federal funding for the project and giving the parties permission to construct the bridge over a state road.
The workers put up the bridge using an accelerated process that called for building the main portion of the span off-site and then installing it in one go to reduce the amount of time traffic would be snarled around the bridge site.
When it released the voicemail audio and transcript, FDOT appeared to put the blame on the university and the engineers.
![Bridge Bridge](https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/w_640,h_640,c_limit,q_auto,f_auto/image001_cgzuwn.jpg)
'The responsibility to identify and address life-safety issues and properly communicate them is the sole responsibility of the FIU design build team,' the department statement said. 'FIGG and the FIU design build team never alerted FDOT of any life-safety issue regarding the FIU pedestrian bridge prior to collapse.'
The National Transportation Safety Board and other state and local officials are investigating the collapse.
In a statement on Monday, Scott announced that he was 'directing FDOT to suspend all future payments of the more than $13.6 million in federal funding originally allocated for this project. Before another dollar is spent on this bridge, we must know exactly what happened.'
The project also received some state and local funding, although federal dollars accounted for the large majority of the support. FDOT is responsible for passing on federal funding to FIU for the bridge.
Finally, the slow cook considers the context of the meal. Will the dish be eaten immediately? Will it need to be kept warm while other dishes are being prepared? Will the dish be plated and taken to guests by servers or will it be part of a buffet? To achieve optimal taste and conviviality, the cook needs to consider the role of the servers [if any] as well as the needs of the guests
Likewise, the Slow Engineer should take into account the role of the construction workers and the public at large. When is it safe for workers to be up on a recently poured concrete structure? What tasks should they perform and when? Were the cracks in the concrete detected two days before the collapse a sign of trouble or not? In the course of adjusting the steel tension rods, should the road below the bridge have been closed to ensure public safety? Like any technological artifact, the FIU Bridge did not exist in a vacuum but rather in a social context with all sorts of people moving around it and interacting with it—and that included the occupants of cars driving underneath the bridge
In drawing this analogy between Slow Food and Slow Engineering, I am not suggesting that engineering should merely slow down, that speed is simply the enemy. Just as some dishes—such as grilled fish—require speed and judgment in order to get a crispy surface while not overcooking the inside of the fish, so certain engineering tasks can—and should--be done quickly and efficiently. In certain contexts, Accelerated Bridge Construction is the appropriate technique. Instead, Slow Engineering is a holistic approach, challenging us to pay attention to the interplay of materials, techniques and context in order to create safe, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing designs.
To help students appreciate this holistic approach, I would tell them the mythic story associated with the great dining hall at New College, Oxford. The ceiling of the dining hall is supported by huge oak beams, some 2 square feet and 45 feet long. Legend has it that when New College was created in 1379, it was given forested land as part of its endowment, and over the centuries, the college’s foresters made sure to preserve very large oak trees. The foresters did so because they knew that, sooner or later, the beams in the dining hall would become infested with beetles, causing them to rot and would need to be replaced. While it is not clear there was ever a specific grove of oaks earmarked for the great hall, the myth conveys the importance of understanding how materials and natural processes underlie all of what we do as engineers. You can’t have a great hall with massive oak beams unless you understand where the oak beams come from and how long it takes for the oak trees to grow.
The lesson of the FIU bridge is that engineers need to continue to take into account the interplay of the limits of materials, natural processes and context. At its best, Slow Engineering reminds us that human activities must align with nature rather than forcing nature to conform to our expectations.