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So you'd be comfortable to live in a high rise building for which an independent engineering report contained the following text?

The joint sealant was observed to be beyond its useful life and are in need of complete replacement. However, the waterproofing below the Pool Deck & Entrance Drive as well as all of the planter waterproofing is beyond its useful life and therefore must all be completely removed and replaced. The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.

Edit - this is text from the actual report - not sure why the downvotes.

It doesn't scream "Get Out", does it?

When I read those sentences as a layman, they don't tell me the building may collapse.

I want to know if an analytical monotone is typical for these reports. Would a report like this be expected to emphasize urgency or would the reader be assumed to know that "major structural damage" means urgent?

If I were writing a report on a piece of software for my boss and I found unsanitized inputs to an SQL database, I wouldn't highlight that any more than anything else I found as he would know that was severe.

Quite typical from the ones I've seen (I'm not a StructE). This is actually quite alarming language for an engineering report, about one step below "imminent collapse" and "immediate evacuation".

That statement is buried on page 7 of the report, no bold text. Yet, above it on page 6 a reminder to follow OSHA-approved window washing techniques is in bold.

Given the context and formatting, this warning seems more like a pro-forma CYA than anything else.

I think when you pay an engineering firm thousands of dollars for a report you tend to read the whole thing. What is it that doesn't jive with the NPR article? The report does indeed call out major structural damage. The report warns that without remediation the damage will spread, exponentially.

The bold is in reference to specific regulations. Everything bolded in the document is a reference to another document. So it may not be for emphasis but rather reference.

Fair. Good observation.

I didn't downvote you, but my guess is that people, like me, don't find that block of text that damning. The text talks about damage to the slab. It does not connect slab damage to damage that could risk the entire building.

If there is risk that a component failure leads to systematic failure, I would expect that a report would delineate that risk.

But the pool and deck aren't within/under the residential units, so I'm not sure why that text would be so alarming.

It may be equally likely the next lot underground garage construction shifted the ground near the condo and caused it's collapse.

It's hard for me to know because I don't know what the pool deck and entrance drive supports. But I do think rushing to proclaim possible causes is not very helpful, since that information is not actionable. No harm will be done by waiting until we have higher quality information.

From pictures, the pool deck seems to have survived the collapse; it wasn't under the towers.[0]

I wouldn't expect this paragraph to have anything to do with a tower collapsing. Pools-in-the-air (over a garage) are notoriously leaky. I read this section to say "the pool might leak if the bottom lacks structural integrity."

In no way would I think "the pool deck is holding up the towers next door."

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2021/06/24/florid...

The phrasing from the report:

> The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.

I agree that it doesn't say "it'll fall apart right this moment" (and well... it did take like 2 more years), but I would wonder why anyone would receive a report with the above phrasing and not seek clarification.

That all being said, we don't know if this specific thing was meaningfully involved in the collapse.

I want to know if an analytical monotone is typical for these reports. Would a report like this be expected to emphasize urgency or would the reader be assumed to know that "major structural damage" means urgent?

If I were writing a report on a piece of software for my boss and I found unsanitized inputs to an SQL database, I wouldn't highlight that any more than anything else I found as he would know that was severe.

>If I were writing a report on a piece of software for my boss and I found unsanitized inputs to an SQL database, I wouldn't highlight that any more than anything else I found as he would know that was severe.

Sure, but as software people we don't have a licensing body that will revoke our license to practice for such an omission. The firm and the author are likely required by their license to operate to make such call outs.

*edit: Also I would add that an engineering firm that believed the building was in imminent danger would not go forward with a project without calling that out and pricing it. They wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole because they would be on the hook if the building failed.

They call out that it is an extremely expensive systemic issue that will need to be repaired (bullet point "b" on page 7), and the first paragraph on page 1 indicates they attached an estimate of the overall costs of necessary repair (although it does not appear to be included in this copy of the document).

What omission are you talking about?

I don't think the document omitted anything; I don't believe the engineer thought the building was at risk of catastrophic collapse.

My point is that _if_ the engineer believed the building was at risk of catastrophic failure they would have stated as much.

> My point is that _if_ the engineer believed the building was at risk of catastrophic failure they would have stated as much.

It seems like maybe the report author(s) did state as much when they said “major structural damage”. I don’t know anything about architecture but, for example, when an accounting firm issues an adverse audit opinion they don’t say “this company is totally screwed!” they say “these financial statements contain material and pervasive misstatements.” It sounds boring and benign to most people but it’s the CPA equivalent of a red alert.

>It sounds boring and benign to most people but it’s the CPA equivalent of a red alert.

Exactly. Joe Blow building manager is not a structural engineer. The comment about "major structural damage" at the end of report was probably not even read. The beginning of the document is about paint bubbles and 'the tile makes the rail too short'. That sets the context.

The article casts a building department administrator as having some dire knowledge of the building condition and simultaneously telling residents everything is fine. But a close examining of the situation leads me to believe the building department administrator had no such indication.

"An occupied building partially collapsed, killing multiple residents. But on the other hand, the report about its systemic structural issues was long and kind of a boring read"

Are you for real?

It's not about the building. It's about the story casting aspersions on someone as if they were culpable when there is no indication they are. This was done by reading the document out of context.

Put yourself in the shoes of a building administrator responsible for oversight of hundreds to thousands of properties. You get a report like this, on a relatively young building and it looks very ho-hum.

But NPR is presenting it with hindsight bias and acting as if there was something ominous in the report. There simply wasn't... and the story is just gotcha journalism.

Yeah while I’m not a structural engineer either but as a lay person, “major structural damage” sounds highly alarming and damage increasing at an “exponential rate” sounds like a very urgent matter.

If building managers don’t take rapid action to further assess and monitor the conditions after being told that, then it sounds like willful negligence.

And if this is not the case, then I am seriously questioning how safe buildings actually are.

Btw, what happened with that brand new bridge in Florida that collapsed and killed people a couple years ago. Were there any actual consequences to those responsible?

Edit: A NYT article on what’s currently known does make it seem like the pool and garage may have been the catalysis of the collapse. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/us/miami-building-investi...

Wikipedia suggests that is still ongoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_Universi...

> If I were writing a report on a piece of software for my boss and I found unsanitized inputs to an SQL database, I wouldn't highlight that any more than anything else I found as he would know that was severe.

I would. And as someone reading the report, even as an expert, I would want and expect the person writing it to organize it by severity, and start by pointing out any urgent items.

What advantage is there to not doing that?

In my case because I have been told a few times it is patronizing to point out the "obvious." I would prefer (but not expect) the style you discuss as well (as I am not all that comfortable with an assumed base of knowledge for documentation), but I have faced far more negative reaction to that than positive.

That sucks. It's hard for me to imagine working with someone so insecure that they would find a convenient, hierarchical organization of report results by severity patronizing.

I would like to know this as well.

I'm not a Civ E, but I have worked in aerospace and software and seen reports in both fields that contain warnings of potentially catastrophic problems use similar language as the report:

  The joint sealant was observed to be beyond its useful life and are in need of complete replacement. However, the waterproofing below the Pool Deck & Entrance Drive as well as all of the planter waterproofing is beyond its useful life and therefore must all be completely removed and replaced. The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.

If I get an audit of my production system and it says on page 7 "There are no database backups. Failure to take regular database backups will lead to permanent data loss in event of hard drive failure." and then two years later, the hard drive finally fails and I lose data, that's my fuckup, not the auditor's. And as others in this thread have mentioned, I don't even need to be licensed to do my job.

It takes an astounding lack of responsibility to say "well they never said the major structural deficiencies were going to cause an imminent collapse! And why was it buried on page 7, and not in bold font?"

I haven't read one for a 136-unit condo complex, but this is typical of most home inspections that you'd see in a SFH real-estate purchase. In general engineers & inspectors present facts, and it's up to the reader to add whatever emotive interpretation they feel is appropriate. There will often be multiple readers for such a report, and the appropriate emotion will often vary depending on who's reading it.

Agreed. That report was absolutely not a call to urgent emergency action. The closest is a warning that the building was built wrong and will eventually need to be fixed, 2.5 pages in.

The good thing about NPR is, you can ask for clarification and they will provide it for you, if you are so inclined, and they will correct it if they are wrong.

However, such language about 'safety of the residents' is not present in his report.

The NPR article was just simplifying. True, the original report didn't use those exact 3 words - but what it did say:

Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.

Is quite damning, and essentially in line with the simplified version given in the NPR article. And in any case directly at odds by the town's building official:

"Structural engineer report was reviewed by Mr. Prieto. It appears the building is in very good shape."

Which may explain why Mr Prieto is "no longer employed by Surfside".

The Washington Post's reporting seems to back you up:

> Kilsheimer said he didn’t believe the damage highlighted in the 2018 report could have led to the collapse of the building. “Nothing in it raised a red flag,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/condo-collapse-sunda...

As an uninformed outsider, from the grand scheme of things, I wouldn't consider any coastal Miami property to be 'safe' regardless of any reports or ratings.

The whole area is sinking, quite quickly overall. It's just common sense to disregard the results of any report deeming any building in the area 'safe', when the local government has been religiously denying that climate change even exists at all, and the insurance companies and report writers all have a short-term incentive to pretend nothing is wrong.

I have not read the report. But I also don't need the report to know that no building in the area is safe enough for me to want to live there.

Everyone is suddenly an expert on structural engineering and thinks that NPR should have one write their news, too.

Because it wasn't urgent at the time if the report, but the report is from 2018, more than 3 years ago.

Way to take a stand "anonuser123456"