Question: Have you ever made a fault in a design that caused harm to people?

Emma Bradley answered on 7 Mar 2016:

Fortunately not! This is something I do think about though, as it can happen (and is usually headline news when it does – just think about buildings falling down in earthquakes). However, we have a strong checking process that aims to prevent this. Basically, any time I do a design for something, it will be checked by another engineer. Sometimes for particularly important structures, like ones that will be full of people (like the stations I design), we do something called a ‘Category III’ check. This is where an entirely different company independently checks our structural design without seeing our calculations. Without having a Category III check signed off, none of our designs can be issued to be built.