Coyote Blog

TJIC links to this great story about the engineer for the Citicorp building who realized, after the building was erected and occupied, that he had made a mistake that could make the building unsafe in high wind loads.  He raised his hand, called a penalty stroke on himself, and got the thing fixed when many others might have rationalized away taking action.  Fortunately, he was respected for doing so:

Before the city officials left,
they commended LeMessurier for his courage and candor, and expressed a
desire to be kept informed as the repair work progressed. Given the urgency
of the situation, that was all they could reasonably do. "It wasn't a case
of 'We caught you, you skunk,'" Nusbaum says. "It started with a guy who
stood up and said, 'I got a problem, I made the problem, let's fix the
problem.' If you're gonna kill a guy like LeMessurier, why should anybody
ever talk?"

I continue to worry, though, that we are actively aligning incentives against having a quality, open engineering dialog.  In any engineering discussion, I don't think there has been a good safety dialog unless someone takes the position that the design (or drug, or whatever) is still unsafe.  Someone needs to advocate the position that the plan is unsafe even if that position is a straw man.  An open process encourages everyone to raise potential issues, even if these issues turn out not to be problems.

Unfortunately, in court, the very existance of such a discussion is used as evidence of liability.  Plaintiff's lawyers wave internal memos at juries showing them that concern existed about safety.  The very healthy definition of a good safety engineering process - a concern and discussion about safety - is turned into evidence of its lack.  More here.