CE 480

Engineering Ethics

The Kansas City Hyatt Hotel Disaster

Negligence And The Professional Debate Over Responsibility For Design

Introduction To The Case

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:

1. During January and February, 1979, the design of the hanger rod connections was changed in a series of events and disputed communications between the fabricator (Havens Steel Company) and the engineering design team (G.C.E. International, Inc., a professional engineering firm). The fabricator changed the design from a one-rod to a two-rod system to simplify the assembly task, doubling the load on the connector, which ultimately resulted in the walkways collapse.

2. The fabricator, in sworn testimony before the administrative judicial hearings after the accident, claimed that his company (Havens) telephoned the engineering firm (G.C.E.) for change approval. G.C.E. denied ever receiving such a call from Havens.

3. On October 14, 1979 (more than one year before the walkways collapsed), while the hotel was still under construction, more than 2700 square feet of the atrium roof collapsed because one of the roof connections at the north end of the atrium failed. In testimony, G.C.E. stated that on three separate occasions they requested on-site project representation during the construction phase; however, these requests were not acted on by the owner (Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation), due to additional costs of providing on-site inspection.

4. Even as originally designed, the walkways were barely capable of holding up the expected load, and would have failed to meet the requirements of the Kansas City Building Code.5

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 fails to meet those responsibilities.

The primary causes of connection failures are:

1. Improper design due to lack of consideration of all forces acting on a connection, especially those associated with volume changes.

2. Improper design utilizing abrupt section changes resulting in stress concentrations.

3. Insufficient provisions for rotation and movement.

4. Improper preparation of mating surfaces and installation of connections.

5. Degradation of materials in a connection.

6. Lack of consideration of large residual stresses resulting from manufacture or fabrication.9

The nut only carried the load of the floor above it.

What is your assessment of this case, based on the following questions:

∑ What measures can professional societies take to ensure catastrophes like the Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse do not occur?

∑ Should discredited engineers be allowed to practice engineering in other states?

∑ What is the engineering society's responsibility in this realm?

∑ Who is ultimately responsible for the fatal design flaw?

∑ Does the call matter to the outcome of the case?

∑ What is the responsibility of a licensed professional engineer who affixes his/her seal to fabrication drawings?

∑ In terms of meeting building codes, what are the responsibilities of the engineer? The fabricator? The owner?

∑ What measures can professional societies take to ensure that catastrophes such as the Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse do not occur?

∑ Do you agree with the findings that the principal engineers involved should have been subject to discipline for gross negligence in the practice of engineering?

∑ Should they have lost their licenses, temporarily or permanently?

∑ Was it fair that the main engineering firm., as a company, was held liable for gross negligence and engineering incompetence?