Engineering Disasters

This new Group will meet this Autumn for five sessions on Wednesdays 15th October, 29th October, 12th November, 26th November and 10th December. Meetings will start at 10.45 in the Southover Church Chapter House and will last 90 minutes. 

The Group will examine a number of historic engineering disasters. Some well known and some which may be unfamiliar. Each event will be examined looking at what happened, why it happened and what lessons were learned from the disaster, hopefully to minimise the risk of re-occurrence. Disasters are normally thought of in terms of some some physical disaster occurring, but sometimes a perfectly reasonable idea can be a total commercial disaster and some of these will be included in the scope. Although the specific events to be looked at in each session have yet to be finalised it is likely they will include the Comet airplane, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse, the Sinclair C5 vehicle, the Bhopal Disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

Each session will focus on two examples and will be be based around Power Point presentations with time for discussion after each presentation. Information on the scope of each session will be advised in advance.