A paper on To Forgive Design by Petroski - Essay Example

The blames of these occurrences are directed to poor design. However, Henry Petroski in his writing, “To Forgive Design,” says for determining causes and correction of engineering failure, we must look beyond design. Petroski in his writing examines many of famous failures of our time from Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007 to Gulf oil spill in 2010 (Petroski, pg. 5). These inevitable disasters show the interdependency of machines and people whose complex behavior the designers did not foresee.

Petroski says even simple technology is embedded in socioeconomic and cultural constraint constraints, contradictions and complications. This work will explore the necessity to imagine failure, the causes of error in engineering and ultimately explore how failure is the best teacher. The most profound mistake engineers and designers can commit failing to imagine the possibility of failure. Having in mind that some people have failed before and as an individual failure is a real issue, makes engineers develop better designs.

For instances, Petroski cites software developers who analyzed their historical developmental failures and helped them come out with better designs of their products. Petroski shows that by explaining the interconnectedness culture, technology and dangers seen to emerge from the complex then it leads to a successful path (Petroski, pg. 23). This forms a platform to encourage the engineers and designers before taking any of the construction; they need to imagine of the possible failures. This will act as an analysis opportunity for them as they determine what can be the cause of those failures.

Sometimes people fail to heed to the warnings and this ends up being catastrophic. Even the strongest structure of the world with the best design can collapse. Therefore, when one imagines that way he explores on the possible designs that are better than the one in place. This opens up the mind of the engineers as they develop towards