Re: OT: Re: Design checklist?

From: <Christopher>
Date: Sat Jun 16 2001 - 13:20:00 EDT

>Chris, as a "failure analysis specialist", have you found that
>drawings/documentation are missing in the worst cases?
Not necessarily in the worst cases. I always ask for such stuff and it's frequently not forthcoming. I'd say there are several broad categories.

Stonewalling by opposition counsel
The records truly don't exist or never existed for reasons unrelated to the case
The records were trashed deliberately
My lawyer client got the wrong stuff and discovery is closed.

Only item 3 covers any actual malice, and it may involve a company policy to destroy all engineering records as a shield against liability. Item 2 covers all the cases in which companies are bought, or disappear for any reason. Much of the equipment I get involved with (punch presses are notorious in this regard) is old and made by outfits long dead. There may have been modifications by consultants or mechanics without documentation for previous owners, also defunct, so no one truly knows anything.

I got involved with a tank rupture once involving a good sized propane facility. Basically the tank ruptured at a wretchedly poor weld in one of the heads. The vessel had no manway so someone burned a hole in the head to get in and inspect it. The tank was bought second hand and had no Code plate. The original one had apparently been removed and another plate (for a different sized vessel) dropped into the rack for the NFPA flammability warning placard. The guy who set up the facility literally operated out of the back of a pick-up truck--no documents there. Fortunately the weld was so bad and the opposition expert so inept that we didn't need any more info about the vessel than we could display photographically or dope out with a tape measure.

My own take on the matter is that a lotta cobbled-up crap gets flogged to the public by inventor-wannabes who think it's still the 1890's and they're Thomas Edison. Too many so-called entrepreneurs think that an organized engineering effort is a sign of personal weakness.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant from <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=l8RSSMN1mNDHFhU8hlmoNi31Ln41hZlFw6SloITUjAclu47FBIfz5_-2UiwpBk9mpI4a4BF6J8Pp_CbO">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a> Received on Sat Jun 16 13:20:00 2001