Counting the cost: Can the lessons learned from a Spanish rail disaster save lives in the future?
The deadly derailment of a Spanish high-speed train in 2013 was put down to driver error. Authorities’ response to the ...
Tag: engineering failure
Why the cause of the Challenger disaster was a known vulnerability
Engineers on the Challenger program knew something the flight directors didn’t want to acknowledge – with infamously disastrous consequences.
Five deaths on an oil rig changed diving safety requirements forever
By 4am on 5 November 1983, two workers, Edwin Arthur Coward and Roy P. Lucas, had returned from a dive ...
Breaking point: South Korea’s department store disaster
Alarming structural flaws caused five floors of a department store in Seoul’s Gangnam District to collapse.
What the Iberian blackout tells Australia about reactive power
Around midday on 28 April 2025, mainland Spain and Portugal experienced a catastrophic grid failure that disconnected 31 GW of ...
Why failure is an option in the built environment
When executed well, safe-to-fail solutions in the built environment could prove to be the finest form of engineering.
Callide C power station explosion: What went wrong and why
A series of unfortunate events combined to cause catastrophe at a Queensland power station, but an expert investigation found deeper ...
Fifty years since Hobart’s Tasman Bridge collapse, what’s changed?
Engineers and bridge managers must develop a better understanding of what causes structural collapse.
Why can’t Paradise Dam be repaired?
The Paradise Dam rebuild has led to several key recommendations for bolstering dam safety management.
The construction failures that caused the Florida International University Bridge collapse
The collapse of the bridge, which killed six people, was a clarion call for enhancing safety procedures in construction.
