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Title: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Shane Ervin on November 24, 2020, 04:11:15 PM
An engineer who signed off on a Radiohead concert stage that collapsed and killed a drum technician in Toronto eight years ago has been found guilty of professional misconduct.

The discipline committee with the Professional Engineers Ontario (P.E.O.) says Domenic Cugliari did not notice several errors and omissions in design drawings for the outdoor stage that collapsed on June 16, 2012.

It also found that Cugliari did not examine the trusses holding heavy lighting equipment and failed to realize those trusses were incorrectly connected to other beams.

CBC News Article (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/radiohead-collapse-guilty-misconduct-1.5814430)
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Brian Jojade on November 24, 2020, 08:54:14 PM
It may be the unpopular decision to be a stickler for details, but especially in rigging, if you do, people can die. It shouldn’t be acceptable. Of course, it shouldn’t take 8 frigging years to figure that out either!
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: frank kayser on November 25, 2020, 11:29:04 PM
The punishment does not seem to match the shoddy engineering provided.
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Craig Hauber on November 26, 2020, 01:54:32 AM
The punishment does not seem to match the shoddy engineering provided.
Is there actually any real punishment at all? 
Sounds like the guy retired sometime in the last 8 years and are there any punitive effects of having misconduct declared if your not actually performing engineering work anymore?  Does the "society" declaration have any "teeth"

Not sure if this now opens up civil suit possibilities?  (not familiar with Canadian legal system and what's possible after such a long duration)

On this forum we have preached and tried to instill fear in the act of improper flying of speakers lest we drop one on someone's head and end up financially ruined for life
-doesn't help reinforce that when a guy drops an entire roof on someone and nothing happens!
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Keith Broughton on November 26, 2020, 07:23:27 AM


Not sure if this now opens up civil suit possibilities?  (not familiar with Canadian legal system and what's possible after such a long duration)


I'm not 100% sure but I think, in this situation, too much time has passed for other legal recourse.
Other than the fact he has to live with the results of his actions, it's not much more than a slap on the wrist.
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Scott Helmke on November 26, 2020, 09:33:37 AM
If remember right this is the guy they brought in after the first engineer refused to sign off on the setup.

I have no idea what the moral of this story ought to be.  Don't hire somebody who's almost retired and might not care about their reputation going forward?  I'd hate to have to take that attitude.  I suppose "don't go shopping for a yes when lives are on the line" would have to do.
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Matthew Knischewsky on November 26, 2020, 11:36:52 AM
If remember right this is the guy they brought in after the first engineer refused to sign off on the setup.

I have no idea what the moral of this story ought to be.  Don't hire somebody who's almost retired and might not care about their reputation going forward?  I'd hate to have to take that attitude.  I suppose "don't go shopping for a yes when lives are on the line" would have to do.

The moral of the story is "Just because this is the way we've always done it doesn't make it safe."

I know a lot of people who worked on and under this particular structure over the years. A friend was scheduled to perform opening for Radiohead on the day it collapsed. I don't want to seem insensitive but the entire blame does not lay at the feet of this one person IMO. It's been a while since I dug into the dirty details of this one but like many other similar failures of temporary entertainment structures there's a long trail of inadequate design, omissions, lack of oversight and understanding of how the structure was intended to function. The main difference in this particular case was the failure was not weather related, the structure as built was grossly overloaded on the day it collapsed.

There were so many opportunities over the preceding 20-something years of the structure's life for someone to put the brakes on erecting it, but they did not. The people who did raise concerns were ignored or silenced. Due to a technicality of the concert venue's location no building permit was required so no outside engineers reviewed the installation. This incident was 100% preventable but the people who could have prevented it looked the other way.

"The Show Must Go On!"

"We've always done it this way"

2 very dangerous statements I have heard far too many times in this line of work.
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Tim McCulloch on November 26, 2020, 11:49:16 AM
If remember right this is the guy they brought in after the first engineer refused to sign off on the setup.

I have no idea what the moral of this story ought to be.  Don't hire somebody who's almost retired and might not care about their reputation going forward?  I'd hate to have to take that attitude.  I suppose "don't go shopping for a yes when lives are on the line" would have to do.

My original take on this "engineer shopping" was that Live Nation willingly violated their own, newly adopted policies by firing the original structural engineer and hiring another, pretty much on the day-of, to sign off of it.

Preamble to a Rant:

I realize that all of us here make our living saying "yes" to people who sign cheques or otherwise hold the purse strings.  We have an inherent reason to overlook, shortchange, or flat out ignore safety issues if doing so makes a client more willing to hire us/our firm, or to increase the amount on the cheque.

Rant:

Live Nation should have lost their ability to hold events in Canada.  Period.  They purposely ignored their own rules and and skirted Province and national regulations in order to accommodate a last minute change by the performers.  Why did Live Nation accede to this request?  You'll have to ask Live Nation, but I'm fairly certain that if the act had been told "no, it's dangerous and a failure would result in cancellation of the show, personal injuries or deaths" they'd have said "never mind."  Instead there was a big rush to brown-nose appease artist relations in a way that led to avoidable death and injuries.  This wasn't a trivial request, like getting more hummus in catering, it was an attempt to defy physics and gravity prevailed in a predictable way.

It is absolutely unnecessary for people to die in order to have a good time.
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Brian Bolly on November 26, 2020, 02:02:46 PM
It is absolutely unnecessary for people to die in order to have a good time.

There's a few life lessons to be learned here.  Especially lately.
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Paul Miller on November 26, 2020, 03:02:37 PM
This article from 2019 gets further into the technical reasons why the collapse occurred.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/radiohead-stage-collapse-inquest-1.5087332
Title: Re: 2012 Radiohead Stage Collapse - Engineer Guilty of Professional Misconduct
Post by: Russell Ault on November 26, 2020, 09:19:22 PM
If remember right this is the guy they brought in after the first engineer refused to sign off on the setup. [...]

Cugliari had been working for over a decade at the same firm as the engineer who did the original drawings in the 90s, George Snowden. Snowden had been signing off on the incorrect drawings for years without much fuss, but given that he died of cancer in 2013 it seems likely that the file was handed to Cugliari because Snowden was retiring. For what it's worth, both had been charged (although not convicted) together about a decade before in relation to another temporary structure collapse that resulted in a worker fatality.

[...] Not sure if this now opens up civil suit possibilities?  (not familiar with Canadian legal system and what's possible after such a long duration) [...]

I would guess that Ontario's statute of limitations for this sort of thing is probably 2 years, but this recent verdict doesn't really change anything on a civil front (in Ontario—as in the US—civil trials, criminal trials, and disciplinary hearings are entirely independent, and the results of one don't necessarily impact the results of another).

To my knowledge there were no lawsuits arising out of the collapse. In Ontario, like most Canadian provinces, workplace injuries are covered under a province-wide insurance system that entirely precludes an employee from suing their employer for negligence. Radiohead's obligations to the deceased's next of kin would be entirely based on how the contract between them and the deceased was structured, but in any event some insurance company would likely have paid it out, then turned around to try and recover from Live Nation, the staging provider, and the engineer. The engineer was under a regulatory requirement to carry professional liability insurance and likely would have been shielded from any personal liability through his company (which declared bankruptcy in 2018), Live Nation disclaimed all responsibility (but their insurance probably still paid out some), and the staging provider likely had no assets and, in any event, almost immediately declared bankruptcy, at which point I'm sure the insurance companies worked it out amongst themselves and kept the courts out of it.

Is there actually any real punishment at all?  [...]

Basically, no. Two separate quirks of the legal system in Ontario (one provincial, one federal) converged to terminate the Occupational Health and Safety Act proceedings (which might have resulted in jail time) against everyone involved before a verdict had been reached. At that point this disciplinary proceeding against the engineer was the only punitive action remaining on the books. It sounds like the PEO did order the maximum fine of $5000 (the written decision doesn't appear to have been published yet).

-Russ