CASE STUDY 2 ANALYZE THIS REAL-LIFE CASE: AN ENGINEERS EXPERIENCE WITH COMMUNICATION AND LISTENING A fascinating problem with the 59-story Citigroup Center tower in New York City (formerly the Citicorp Center) came to light when a nationally known structural engineer, William J. LeMessurier, listened to a students concerns about the strength of the columns that support the building. Although the students concerns proved to be unfounded, as a result of the call, LeMessurier discovered a much more serious problem with the structural integrity of the building. The following story was adapted from The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis by Joe Morgenstern (1995). The beautiful Citigroup tower was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins, Jr., but it was engineered by LeMessurier and his firm. There were several design firsts in this project. One innovation was the wind braces hidden inside the structural skininstead of one piece, two pieces coming from opposing sides if soldered together in the center would be as strong as a single brace. The second was the tuned mass damper (TMD)a 400-pound block of concrete located near the top of the building that was designed to greatly reduce the natural sway of such a tall building. The third innovation of LeMessuriers was the placement of the four columns on which the building rested. These massive, nine-story stilt-like columns were located at the center of each side of the building instead of at the corners. This made the building appear to float over the church, shops, and plaza underneath it. The students questions were about these columns. LeMessurier was very proud of this building, which had won much engineering praise. He patiently explained to the student, who was writing a paper on the building, that the placement of the columns was exactly correct to resist what sailors call quartering winds those which come from a diagonal and, by flowing across two sides of a building at once, increase the forces on both (p. 6). Because LeMessurier was teaching a structural engineering class at Harvard, the students call reminded him that his own students would benefit from this information on quartering winds, as well as the new wind braces he had had installed in the columns to resist strong winds. Although New York building code required that such braces pass only perpendicular wind tests, as background for his lecture, he calculated the strength of the braces when hit by quartering winds. To his surprise, he found that these winds would increase the strain on several of the braces by 40 percent and would increase the strain on the joints of the columns by 160 percent. Even this increase would be no problem for soldered joints. However, a few weeks earlier, LeMessurier had discovered that the steel company who built Citicorp tower had decided to use bolted jointswhich in most cases would cost less yet be just as safe. LeMessurier still was not overly worried because a margin of safety is built into the standard formulas for calculating how strong a joint must be in structural columns. However, when he discovered that the building team had defined the braces as trusses and not as columns, he became very worried. Because trusses are exempt from the extra safety margin, LeMessurier knew that there would be too few bolts in these joints for safety under the force of quartering winds even with the TMD designed to reduce building sway. LeMessurier decided to ask the labs of Canadas Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory to run some wind tunnel tests. The results were not encouraging. After working through each floor and each joint, LeMessurier determined that the 30th floor had the weakest joint: If that one gave way, catastrophic failure of the whole structure would follow (p. 22). The likelihood of a storm serious enough to create this disaster was calculated to be once every 16 years; with the TMD calculated in, it dropped to once every 55 years. However, the TMD required electricity, which would likely fail in this type of storm. By now it was the end of July, and hurricane season was rapidly approaching. His worry now escalated to panic. There was a way to correct the problem: A heavy steel plate could be welded around each of the 200 bolted joints like a giant Band-Aid. The joints were readily accessible by simply removing the carpet and sheetrock that covered them. This fix would raise the safety of the building to a once-in-every-700-years storm. However, as Morgenstern noted, To avert disaster, LeMessurier would have to blow the whistle quickly on himself. That meant facing the pain of possible protracted litigation, probable bankruptcy, and professional disgrace (p. 24). This would be in addition to the cost of repairs (which would be at least $1 million), the problem of evacuating thousands of people, and the panic all of this would create. Although the student had been wrong about the exact problem, his concern had uncovered a serious structural weakness. What would you do in such a situation? Lets take a look at how our case study crisis ended: Once LeMessurier realized how serious the danger could be from a rare quartering wind, he took immediate action and notified the lawyers, the architect, and the top brass at Citicorp. After discussions, the following steps were taken: Emergency generators for the TMD were set up; contracting engineers inspected an exposed joint on an unused floor and agreed that LeMessuriers steel Band-Aid idea was feasible; a number of constantly monitored strain gauges were attached to the building; an advisory group of weather experts were gathered to provide wind alerts; an evacuation plan for the building and surrounding area was planned by Citicorp and the American Red Crosss director of disaster services; the building commissioner and nine city officials were briefed about the danger and proposed actions; and a short fairly vague press release was sent out. Anticipation was high. To minimize concern, welding occurred only at night and was cleaned up before office workers arrived each morning. By the time Hurricane Ella headed for New York, repairs to the most serious joints had been completed, and with the TMD operating, the building could withstand a 200-year storm (fortunately, the hurricane veered out to sea). Another fortunate thing was that the city newspapers were on strike during the repairs, so no citizen awareness or panic occurred. Although Citicorp filed a claim against LeMessurier and the architect, they agreed to accept the insurance companys payment of $2 million and dropped the suit. Robertson, the structural expert brought into the case by Citicorp, said, I have a lot of admiration for Bill, because he was very forthcoming. While we say that all engineers would behave as he did, I carry in my mind some skepticism about that (Morgenstern, 2005, p. 69). For more details on this story, go to the website for the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science at www.onlineethics.org and search on LeMessurier.

Instructions:

Read Case Study 2 and then respond to these questions:

1. Evaluate LeMessuriers listening skills on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) and explain why you gave him the score that you did. What specific advice would you give to LeMessurier to improve his listening?

2. Determine whether he was guilty of any signs of poor listening and why. For example, could LeMessuriers learning about important details so late be considered a sign of poor listening? Why or why not?

3. Decide whether it was ethical for LeMessurier and others involved in the crisis to withhold this information from the public for 20 years.

4. What did conducting all repair work at night after all employees had gone home have to do with nonverbal communication? Considering that this decision was really expensive, do you think it was the correct decision? Why or why not?

5. When LeMessurier was presenting the problem and solution to the top brass at Citicorp, the lawyers, the director of the American Red Cross, the building commissioner, and various New York City officials, which types of nonverbal communication do you imagine were the most important in getting their cooperation? For example, what physical environment and seating arrangement would work best for this type of message? Also, what appearance and nonverbal presence would you recommend for LeMessurier? Formal or casual clothing? Confident or contrite posture and facial expressions? Use of immediacy behaviors? Other factors?