It bugs me that FIGG (one of the contractors) appears to be threatening the professional licenses of the engineers who helped the Miami Herald's investigation, by suggesting that doing so was unethical.
As a licensed Professional Engineer, you have to be quite careful criticizing other engineers. As long as the engineer signing off met "standard practices", he is covered and saying that he is not could get you in quite hot water.
In addition, while it is certainly possible that the engineer screwed up, it is also not impossible that the concrete may have been substandard, installation instructions may not have been followed, etc.
For example, in the Citibank Tower, the design was incorrect for quartering winds. However, Bethlehem Steel, the steel supplier, suggested cheaper bolted connections which made the problem worse.
http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/12/08/citicorp-centre-to...
Engineering failures are often a chain. That's why the NTSB has to be allowed to do its work.
I would be very interested in any law or regulation you can find that says otherwise.
I would also add that most of the involvement of engineers during lawsuits is to establish exactly what state of practice is in the local area. It would be hard to do that if all these other engineers didn't have or couldn't give an opinion.
An engineer in a lawsuit as an expert witness is a VERY different beast from making public statements about an engineering failure.
Much of the way this is being played out in the press is that the statements by the outside engineers are implying that the engineering firm didn't due sufficient analysis.
That's a statement that they do NOT have the facts to support and falls under "libel". Under a "libel" charge, the defendant has to prove that the statements made are true rather than the plaintiff showing that they are false.
In addition, it's quite easy to take a known failure point and then backfill the analysis to find the mistake. The more interesting question would be to take the design and give it to a firm that doesn't know about the failure and see if they can find the flaw in the analysis.
Being an expert witness is completely different than being an engineer talking to the public. Generally speaking an engineer close to the details of the project is going to know more than you. If you have concerns, you call up the engineer and you have a discussion. If he's dismissive you still have the choice to escalate the matter, but it's usually to someone in the government, not the public at large. Engineers need to be trusted by the public and shooting your mouth off about another engineer degrades public trust.
I am disagreeing with the statement that you could get in "quite hot water" by noting that the only liability you are exposing yourself to by stating your opinion is looking stupid. Yours and my opinions on public trust and how someone should conduct themselves is orthogonal to the question.
It's also not so much a matter of law as it is professionalism.
As long as both the critic and the criticized are supporting their arguments with reasons and engaged in dialogue, the outcome should be net good for everyone.
On the other, criticising a collegue for a mistake that is only obvious in retrospect is also poor sportsmanship.
2. "After you've dropped a bridge...": Until the investigation is complete, no one has any business assigning responsibility. (In fact, the investigation probably won't assign responsibility; that will be the job of the court system in the subsequent lawsuits.)
http://to70.com/why-aviation-safety-experts-dont-talk-about-...
Criticism, behind closed doors or strictly in the company of other engineers with the correct training and experience, is not dangerous.
Criticism shared with non-engineers amounts to second-guessing and degrades the trust of the public in the profession as a whole, which has tangible negative outcomes for everyone.
Imagine if every project you'd been on had another developer bending the ear of management saying "oh, that's the wrong editor...oh, that's not the right algorithm to use..."! It'd be awful.
For mechanical and structural engineering, both much more difficult and unknowable than software, it is of the utmost importance not to foment doubt and uncertainty in people who are by definition unqualified to properly understand the criticisms and weight them.
Also makes it ever so easy to bury the negligence and mistakes. Leaving the public devoid of trust and potentially with some very tangible negative outcomes. For instance:
"Yes your condition should have been identified, it's clear from the first X-rays in your history. No it's too late to do anything about it now, you just have to live with it. Put that in writing? I couldn't possibly do that."
Repeat several times.
Applicable to many of the professions in varying degree.
It works precisely until there is a scandal too big to cover-up.
Why do you think otherwise?
The Citibank tower continues to sway and creak, more noticeably than most comparable buildings, in a strong wind.