{"id":107,"date":"2015-09-01T16:59:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T21:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riskpro.us\/blog\/?p=107"},"modified":"2015-09-01T16:59:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T21:59:33","slug":"engineering-errors-missed-it-by-that-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/engineering-errors-missed-it-by-that-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering Errors: \u201cMissed It By That Much!\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Sattelite-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-108\" src=\"http:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Sattelite-1.jpg\" alt=\"Engineering\" width=\"564\" height=\"546\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An engineer once asked his lawyer how to limit his risk of having to pay a claim or of being sued. The lawyer simply told him, \u201cDon\u2019t make any mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer\u2019s advice was straight forward enough. But the idea of not making any mistakes is a little bit easier said than done. Even when every calculation and measurement has been checked and doubled checked, mistakes happen.<\/p>\n<p>Scattered across a patch of Martian ground are the faint remnants of the Mars Climate Orbiter. In 1999, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/TECH\/space\/9909\/20\/mars.orbiter.preview\/index.html?iref=allsearch\" target=\"_blank\">Orbiter had finished its 415 million mile flight<\/a> and entered the atmosphere of Mars. The $125 million spacecraft was moments away from safely entering the atmosphere. At least that\u2019s what engineers thought would happen.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, one group of engineers transmitted the calculations for the Orbiter\u2019s velocity in the English system to a second group of engineers where it was interpreted as metric. Even though the measurement of velocity came down to millimeters per second within a detailed system of checks and balances, it wasn\u2019t enough. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/thisdayintech\/2010\/11\/1110mars-climate-observer-report\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Orbiter burned up,<\/a> leaving everyone scratching their heads.<\/p>\n<p>Making mistakes is something that happens not only to engineers, but to every single professional. Alexander Pope said it best <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/quotes\/tag\/mistakes\" target=\"_blank\">when he wrote<\/a>, \u201cTo err is human; to forgive, divine.\u201d Unfortunately, as a professional engineer, you know that the first part is unavoidable, but the second rarely happens.<\/p>\n<p>For both those reasons, you need <a href=\"http:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/architects-engineers-professional-liability-insurance.html\" target=\"_blank\">professional engineer liability insurance<\/a> for every single project. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/riskpro-contacts.html\" target=\"_blank\">Let us explain<\/a> how we can cover you and your engineering firm today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An engineer once asked his lawyer how to limit his risk of having to pay a claim or of being sued. The lawyer simply told him, \u201cDon\u2019t make any mistakes.\u201d The lawyer\u2019s advice was straight forward enough. But the idea of not making any mistakes is a little bit easier said than done. Even when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,23,27,28,29,30,48],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architects-engineers","tag-accident","tag-design-professionals","tag-engineering-firm","tag-engineers","tag-engineers-insurance-coverage","tag-engineers-liability","tag-professional-liability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riskpro.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}