WSF model
Last year, with fellow producer Julian Watson, Gorham launched Why Stuff Fails to give engineering its due, inviting subject matter experts to analyze how and why failures happen. Since then, he’s produced six episodes, each 20–30 minutes, exploring events including the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse and the sinkhole that opened beneath the National Corvette Museum in Ohio, swallowing eight vintage Corvettes.
“I’d been producing a show that covered four stories in 44 minutes, and the engineering tended to get short shrift,” Gorham said. Although he studied biology in college, he became increasingly interested in how bridges, buildings, and machines work, and how they can unravel.
For the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, Gorham turned to Harries, PhD, FASCE, FACI, FIIFC, P.Eng at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, who has spent his career in forensic engineering. Harries has investigated structural collapses in many capacities and is regularly consulted by reporters, lawyers, and government officials.
After the Lake View Drive Bridge collapsed onto Interstate 70 in Washington County on December 27, 2005, Harries helped test the remaining girders and identify the source of the failure. He has provided forensic investigation about the Lowe’s Motor Speedway pedestrian bridge collapse following a NASCAR event in May 2000 and has consulted in multiple capacities on the I‑35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. This summer, he will be conducting a review survey of glass‑fiber composite bridge decks in the Pittsburgh region.
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