Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.

Surveying and engineering were quite close back then.

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that they teach us much more than studies of success. It is not that success stories cannot serve as models of good design or as exemplars of creative engineering. They can do that, but they cannot teach us how close to failure they are.