A show about engineering failures and disasters. We examine the technical, human and organisational causes of failure, and explore why our decision-making is no...
As you can tell by the title of this episode this isn’t a normal episode of The Brady Heywood Podcast. In today’s episode we introduce you to a new show that we’ve been working on called Simplifying Complexity, a podcast all about complexity science. Simplifying Complexity is all about understanding the underlying principles that govern how systems work; systems as diverse as economies, ecologies, cities and countries. In each episode, we'll meet with the experts, and learn everything from how economies can go boom or bust, to how the Medicis wielded power in Venice in the 1400s, and why large animals live longer than small animals. And above all, we'll learn about the principles that tie all of these things together. In the Brady Heywood Podcast, you learnt how things failed, from a technical standpoint, and an organisational standpoint. Simplifying Complexity takes us one step further, to understand how systems work, and just as importantly, how they fail. If you're interested, we've included a teaser of episode one of Simplifying Complexity, where we're joined by David Krakauer from the Santa Fe Institute, who's going to introduce us to the basics and the history of complexity science. Connect: Simplifying Complexity on Apple Podcasts Simplifying Complexity on Spotify Simplifying Complexity on Twitter Sean Brady on Twitter Sean Brady on LinkedIn Brady Heywood website This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.
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25:19
Miami Bridge Failure - Part 3
In today's episode, we bring to a close our three-part series on the collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Miami, Florida, in 2018. In part one, you heard about the cracks in the bridge and how nothing was done about them. And in part two, you heard about the serious errors that were made in the bridge's design. In this episode, we take a deep dive into two unanswered questions from this failure: just why did everyone ignore the cracks in the bridge; and why did a rigorous checking process not identify the errors in the bridge's design? This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.
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32:31
Miami Bridge Failure - Part 2
Today's episode is the second of a three-part series on the 2018 collapse of the International University Pedestrian Bridge in Miami, Florida. In our last episode, you heard how a pedestrian bridge under construction at the Florida International University collapsed in 2018 and killed six people. While many things came together to cause the collapse of this structure, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) identified some serious errors in the design of the bridge. In this episode, we take a deep dive into these serious design errors as we attempt to understand why this tragedy occurred. Resources and links: NTSB Illustrated Digest on the collapse This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.
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19:50
Miami Bridge Failure - Part 1
Today's episode is the first of a three-part series about the 2018 collapse of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge in Miami, Florida. In this part, you'll hear how the signals which could have prevented the collapse of the bridge were ignored, leading to the deaths of six people. You'll also hear how the checks and balances put in place to identify these bad decisions failed. And how this bridge gave warning sign after warning sign that something was wrong, but the parties involved did little to act. The more you hear about what happened, the harder you'll find it to understand why it happened. This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.
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25:30
The Brady Review
Today's episode is a little different. It explores 'The Brady Review', a report Brady Heywood undertook on the mining and quarrying industry in Queensland, Australia. From January 2000 until the end of July 2019, 47 people lost their lives in the mining and quarrying industry in Queensland, Australia. That's an average of 2.4 fatalities per year, or 12 fatalities in any five year period. What's causing these fatalities? Is it that the mining industry is inherently hazardous? Or is it bad luck or human error? Resources and links: The Brady Review report Rethinking Safety podcast Causal Diagram example This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.
A show about engineering failures and disasters. We examine the technical, human and organisational causes of failure, and explore why our decision-making is not nearly as rational as we’d like to think.
New Zealand