this is ridiculous. First of all, the length of the bolt should not make any difference as far as i can tell. Second, why are these people contacting this guy by phone out of the blue like this? The engineer should not have even answered their questions. The people that fabricate the concrete panels would have their own engineers to determine how they should be anchored. The connections would be designed by the panel fabricating company, not the firm that designed the tunnel. Any engineer contacted should know this and should automatically suspect that these people are looking for someone to bypass a previous decision by the concrete engineer simply to circumvent costs associated with ensuring a safe design. Everyone culpable involved deserves exactly what they get.
I worked as a concrete engineer for a year and as a research tech in a concrete testing lab for 2 years.
You're absolutely right.
Secondly, this story is an attempt by the Boston Globe to shift the blame for the Big Dig fiasco to the engineers and the people who designed the structure.
The Globe does not want to implicate the Unions and the political corruption class in Mass (Democrats).
I lived in Boston in the pre-Big Dig era. Back then, they were estimating the cost of the project (this was in the late 1980's) and a friend of mine who worked for MIT Research Engineering (MITRE) told me the project would cost twenty fold that estimate because it would take place in Massachusetts - a sinkhole of corruption that even people on this board cannot fathom.
Boston and the state saw Federal Dollars gift wrapped in a bow when the project was approved.
Everyone got in line and had their hand out for "their share."
The Union bosses ruled this project from start to finish.
