Henry Petroski Quotes

I emphasize that virtually every engineering calculation is ultimately a failure calculation, because without a failure criterion against which to measure the calculated result, it is a meaningless number.

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

Any design, whether it's for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.

Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure, and thus it is critical to identify exactly how a structure may fail. The computer cannot do this by itself . . .

I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that they teach us much more than studies of success. It is not that success stories cannot serve as models of good design or as exemplars of creative engineering. They can do that, but they cannot teach us how close to failure they are.

In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.

Failure is Central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation.

The answer lies in preventing these failures, not in looking for better ways to fix the people who are failing.

A pattern is either right or wrong...it is no stronger than its weakest point.

When I was an adolescent in England, at school we had to read 'Death of a Salesman.' I remember feeling incredibly moved by the portrayal of these people and the idea with which Miller broached the whole subject of failure or failed systems, or the way that people are crushed by a system in which they find themselves.

In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.

Federal regulations forbid delaying inspections for fracture-critical bridges like the fallen Minneapolis bridge - the kind with a lack of redundancy in design, so that a single failure in a load-bearing part can cause the entire bridge to collapse.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

I've learnt something from every failure. The products I helped design at the first two companies I worked for were utter failures. But now I know why.

Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.

The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful designs.

If you don't fix latent failures in your system, you're asking for trouble.

Several highly improbable and therefore unforeseen failures.

In any endeavor, you have to understand your tolerance for risk. What's a failure you can afford?

The first week in intelligence school, you learn there are only two conditions in life. There is policy success, or there is intel failure. There is no other condition in life.

A bridge shouldn't just fall down in the middle of America. Not a bridge that's a few blocks from my house. Not an eight-lane highway. Not a bridge that I drive over with my family every day, along with tens of thousands of Minnesotans. But that's what happened.

(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

By definition, risk-takers often fail. So do morons. In practice it's difficult to sort them out.

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.