Greg Batista - Negligence! Averting Disaster at Your Building: Lessons Learned from the Champlain Towers Collapse

Introduction

W hen I was in second grade, my mom bought me the toy that would change my life: Lincoln Logs. Before the age of Legos, there were Lincoln Logs. I realized that I wanted to grow up to build, create, and design from an early age. I loved making art and I also had a visual, three-dimensio nal mind.

While I am an engineer by trade, I have always been drawn to creative endeavors. I prefer to pass the time writing poetry, making music, and producing videos. These creative pursuits even took me to the extent of joining a traveling dance groups during my college years. Growing up, I gravitated toward architecture because it fuses the technical with aesthetics and creativity. I was devastated when I found out that I couldnt get into college for architecture, and my family could not afford to send me out of state for college. Where I grew up in Puerto Rico, there was just one architecture school, which accepted only about 15 students per year. I then decided to go for my second-best option: structural eng ineering.

In hindsight, that was the best outcome I could have hoped for since, as a structural engineer, I leverage my natural talents for math, the analytical, and computers. At the same time, I channel my creativity through other means. Today, I own a building with a studio for my creative projects and an office for my techn ical work.

During my last year of engineering school in 1991, I began working for Turner Construction Company, one of the largest construction companies globally at that time. The experience was incredible for me. At a relatively young age, I was in the trenches learning high-rise construction at a world-cla ss level.

By my early 30s, I was at the top of my game in construction as a project manager on multiple high-rise projects in South Florida. Never mind that I barely slept and was caught in a constant state of stress from managing 300 to 400 people on a project. Still, I was good at the work and loved the challenge.

The thrill was not enough to keep me going much longer, and I was quickly burning out. I told myself I would start a structural engineering business instead. My construction buddies mocked me, saying I was moving on to a cushy desk job where I would sit around in air conditioning and draw pretty pictures all day. Construction folks typically think engineers have the most comfortable jobs since we work in air-conditioned offices while theyre out in the field, cracking the whip in what many believe is one of the most high-stress jobs on earth.

I knew little about owning and operating a real-world engineering office. I had my college education, my license, and limited experience in actual design engineering, and that was about it.

Im going to open an engineering business anyway, I decided. Everyone thought I was crazy. However, most people know that the fundamental education in your career only comes from hands-on experience after you graduate. In my case, ignorance was most certainly bliss as I learned how to establish and run an engineering business the hard way. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to start my business when engineers were in hig h demand.

After two years, I had five employees. After three years, it was ten. Slowly but surely, I was growing. Most of our projects were engineering jobs where I performed the designing myself. So I taught myself to design (of course, with the help of some brilliant people) and learned all the codes so I could hire the right people and be in responsible charge of our projects. Our first five years were a period of intense learning. That was over 20 y ears ago.

Today, I have more than three decades of hands-on construction, design, and engineering experience. Its what sets me apart from everybody else. I often act as an expert witness in court cases involving engineering and construction mishaps. Ive participated in over 100 cases in the past ten years. Its rare to have the knowledge and background in engineering and construction at the le vel I do.

Throughout my career, Ive witnessed many unfortunate events, from jobsite accidents to hurricanes, sinkholes, and earthquakes, including the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake of 2010 that claimed 200,000 lives. Every construction or engineering tragedy has lessons to be learned from it. My extensive hands-on experience performing thousands of inspections and working with hundreds of condominiums in South Florida gives me a unique vantage point to understand why the Champlain Towers tragedy occurred and to make real-world recomme ndations.

Before I ever decided to write this book, I developed the Ask G. Batista brand to help educate non-engineering folks about the intricacies of engineering and construction. The main goal is to allow people to make better decisions about taking care of the places where they live, work, vacation, and play. Ive even written several books, which are available on my website www.askgbatista.com, to answer many of the questions most residents, owners, property managers, and real estate agents (and other non-engineering and construction types) have when they are thinking of undertaking maintenance, renovations, and repairs to their property.

I come from a family of teachers and my curiosity has driven all I have done in life. It led me to found and own an engineering and construction business at the tender age of 32. As someone who so highly values the learning process, I love sharing the knowledge Ive gained. With this book, my goal is to help everyday people learn and understand why this tragedy occurred and how we can keep it from happening again through the lessons learned from the Champlain Towers. And, as aging structures continue to deteriorate in our country, it's become critical to broadcast these lessons to the broad er public.

The nations infrastructure and buildings are deteriorating and consistently receiving failing grades from top engineering and professional groups. Apart from bridges, roadways, water plants, and underground utilities, we have buildings where we live, play, shop, and work. The buildings where we live will be the primary focus of this book. Florida alone has more than 1.5 million residential condominiums, of which nearly half are at least 40 years old. For the past 30 years, I have devoted my life to engineering and repairing these existing s tructures.

Let this book serve as an initial non-technical education for everyday people, like many I speak to almost daily who dont understand how something like this could happen here in the United States in the 21 st Century. Let this book also serve as a testament to the human spirit that strives to learn from past mistakes so that future generations can build better lives for themselves, their families, and the community at large. But most importantly, as a professional who feels that our industry has let down the people we have sworn to protect, let this book serve as a tribute to those that perished in this tragedy, with the hope that we will have the tenacity to find out exactly why this happened and the political will and courage to make the necessary recti fications.

Chapter 1

Presenting the Problem

T hroughout the years, I have come to rely on analogies to explain certain complex engineering and construction concepts to my clients. The following analogy is one of my favorites since it neatly expresses the intricacies of an inanimate object and brings home the idea of adequately maintaining and taking care of sa id object.

The structures we occupy are like a h uman body.

Condos, homes, industrial power plants, and office buildings are like human bodies. Human bodies have plumbing systems that allow water to enter to provide cleanliness and plumbing systems designed to get rid of waste. Buildings possess similar systems. Where human bodies have a nervous system, condominiums have electrical systems with receptacles, fire alarms, security cameras, and long strands of cabling connecting each one of these co mponents.