Henry Petroski Quotes

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.

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.

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

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.

I've really thought a lot about why other companies fail or succeed. I had to be a student of failure and find out why things went off the rails. I did that at a fairly deep level, and it's still something I do.

A helmet is the most important part of any jockey's kit because of the number of falls you take, so I wouldn't want to be wearing anything on the track unless it had been thoroughly tested.

Risk and failure is a part of our equation, and if you are seeing too little failure, you are actually probably not taking enough risks.

How can any company know if its processes, products, people are safe? Only if everyone is watching and telling the truth. The first part can be assumed; the second cannot.

Finding out exactly what went wrong is key toward preventing future debacles.

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

I love criticism. Equitable Life went down because management wouldn't brook criticism, but if you are in business, you have to hear what's going wrong.

Most of the work performed by a development engineer results in failure.

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.

We call the fates of the Titanic and the Concordia - as well as those of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia - 'accidents.' Foreseeing such undesirable events is what engineers are expected to do. However, design trade-offs leave technological systems open to failings once predicted, but later forgotten.

As a producer you have creative control, and that's what is so exciting about it. At the end of the day, if you have made a film it's totally your responsibility, and if it works it's your responsibility and if it doesn't it's also your responsibility.

The dumb-manager theory of business problems just didn't hold water for me. There had to be a deeper reason why smart people would make decisions that lead to failure.

We have 40 million reasons for our failure but not one excuse.

We’ve got to get the bad operators out of business so that the good operators can be rewarded for investing in safety.

Processes break in two ways. They break because they don't have the right checks and balances and because they don't have the right execution.

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

We are constantly auditing our supply chain. Making sure that safety standards are - are, you know, are the highest. We're making sure that working conditions are the highest.

Back to Microsoft days, I'm always looking for, 'OK, that's great, but what can go wrong?'

Letting ourselves down in some fashion is such an integral part of daily life that the paucity of literature on the subject is baffling.

Your goal as an entrepreneur is to understand not only what your business does but the clients that it serves. If you really have your pulse on their needs and wants, then your 'absolute' failures are always going to have limits.