Still can’t find info on builders...looking though
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It may not be important... failure has numerous general categories and an endless number of specific failure mechanisms that fall under them. The builder will of course get a lot of scrutiny but it may have been a fine building and the failure has nothing to do with the builder. Here are the primary general ones that fit most applications, not just foundations and buildings but equipment and other things as well...
Pre-design selection and specification criteria.... A designer can’t be told that they need to be designing a structure to handle X load when it actually 2 X that you need. Similarly, you can’t tell a designer that the structure is located on the Canadian Shield as opposed to swampland in Mexico City. What are all the standards that are required and are they in fact suitable? Lots of standards are not and this is one of the reasons that they are constantly being revised...
Design..... Plenty of ways for calculations and design methods to go wrong during the design stage and not get caught before things get built.
Manufacturing and fabrication of the components and sub-components.... Fabrication errors, wrong or substandard materials, QC/QA errors and inadequate inspections etc.
Construction and installation.... endless number of ways that things go wrong when it is all put together including the quality of the materials and workmanship that everything else is built on...
Commissioning.... poor setup of all the components and stuff that isn’t checked out to confirm that is running right and so the purchaser in the end just ‘lives with it’ and it might degrade faster.
Maintenance... stuff needs to be maintained properly. Can’t expect good life out of a car if no one ever changes the oil.
Operation....This is all about operating whatever it is that was purchased in accordance with its original design limits. Don’t expect to get the same life out of a car that is driven daily on pot hill alley at 100 mph as opposed to a smooth freeway at 60 mph. Can’t have a dance floor or a balcony designed for 200 people and jam 400 on to it.
And so it goes... lots of ways for things to go wrong.
All true, But I still have a hunch that the builder might have cut a few corners...like the contractors who built the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston.