How Did The Tacoma Bridge Collapse?

Overall, it can be seen that the Tacoma bridge collapse occurred due to a number of crucial decisions made by engineers, contractors and the government. The extent to which these decisions were ethical depends on the ethical stance being considered. Economically, the government favoured reducing costs as opposed to the safety and quality of the bridge. Similarly, the contractors accepted the contract for a design that they were not able to fully complete and had to make changes when constructing the bridge. During the construction stage, Clark Eldridge did not abide by the engineering ethical principles as he failed to "identify, evaluate, mitigate and manage risks"8 arising from the oscillating deck. Leon Moisseiff's keenness on applying
Contractors decided to build the foundation piers using Eldridge's design and the rest of the bridge was completed using Moisseiff's design.6 This decision meant that the workers found difficulty finishing off the bridge and had to use many creative techniques such as packing girders in dry ice to get them to fit together.1When looking at the workers' actions through the ethical principle of duty, they would be deemed unethical because they should have reported the issue to a supervising engineer instead of coming up with their own solution. The contractors can also be seen to act in an unethical way since they should not have accepted the design contract before analysing the working conditions and the complexity of the design required. Competition for engineering contracts may have been the reason for the contractors to accept the contract straight away. In addition, it was noted by an engineer that "As soon as floor forms were started, noticeable oscillation occurred. This oscillation steadily increased while the bridge floor was placed, varying in intensity in accordance with wind conditions."1 It was also reported that the deck was moving up and down vertically in moderate wind conditions.9 The above conditions should have been sufficient for the workers to halt construction until a solution was found, but this was not the case in practice. Again, this reflects the worker's unethical approach; they were more concerned with completing construction rather than reporting the oscillations and attempting to find a solution. It can also be argued that the Lead Engineer project (Clark Eldridge) did not act in a professional manner and should have interfered to stop the construction. Eldridge was the main engineer responsible for supervising construction and failure to interfere means that he has breached RAE's third code. The code states