Ethical Issues from the Kansas City Hyatt

Course Description:

This course will examine the ethical issues that arose from the 1981 collapse of atrium lobby walkways at the newly constructed Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri.  This tragic incident resulted in the loss of 114 lives and 200 injuries and is the most serious structural engineering failure in United States history.  Out of this tragedy a number of serious ethical issues arose for the engineering profession. In this course you will learn about the structural design feature that was the nexus of the failure, and the organizational and procedural deficiencies that allowed the fatal design change to be implemented.  You will learn about the ensuing technical investigation, the issues of responsibility and liability, and lessons that were learned that can help us prevent future tragic failures such as this one.  This course is intended for engineers, architects and other design and construction professionals wanting to learn how the most tragic structural failure in United States history resulted from organizational and procedural failures in the building design and construction process.

Learning Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the history of the project
• Understand the post-mortem
• Know the one good thing that came out of this