It’s natural to point to poor risk assessment when looking at this disaster.
Let me suggest something different. This likely wasn’t a flaw in risk assessment during the design phase. It’s likely a flaw in the management of change for MDOT who manages the bridge. (Let’s let the great folks at the National Transportation Safety Board do their investigating!)
The bridge was built in 1972. It was designed in the 1960’s (comparable to Boeing’s 747).
Allianz states that ship size has ballooned in that time by 1,500%. The impact of a ship strike has grown exponentially (force = mass x acceleration). Check out the Wall Street Journal article: https://lnkd.in/e3RxM9TY
Design and risk assessment was likely correct for when the bridge was designed.
The failure was not noticing the world had changed and the risk profile changed as well. If I was a betting man, I’d bet money that the engineers at MDOT recognized this, asked for funding and the politicians refused to fund millions in upgrades because it’s not a good use of taxpayer dollars.
I compare this incident with Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant explosion. When the plant was built, no one lived close by. Eventually thousands lived next to the plant. The probability of an explosion/release didn’t change, but the consequences certainly did. The change in the environment went unmitigated. Over 2,000 people died from the release of pesticide.
Management of Change is one of the most significant and common contributors to large industrial disasters.
A great source for more information is Marsh’s 100 largest losses document https://lnkd.in/eE3cw3db
