OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Human Resource Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the human resource frame
2. Apply the human resource frame to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

On July 17th, 1981, a chain of preventable and correctable mistakes in project

management created the conditions required for a suspended walkway in the Regency
Hyatt Hotel located in Kansas City MO to suffer a load failure and collapse. The
catastrophe resulted in the loss of life of 114 people and an additional 216 guests
suffering varying degrees of injuries.

For the case study, I will be an independent investigator from the American Society of
Civil Engineers tasked with conducting root cause analysis to determine what failures led
to the worst non-deliberate structural failure in US history resulting in the d eadliest
structural collapse to date.

2) Describe how the human resources of the organization influenced the situation.

This week’s module unfortunately does not align very well with this case study since the
problem lies much outside the scope of human resources. However, this does mean that
there aren’t some areas of overlap, even if small or stretched to make fit the scenario.

The primary root cause failure of the walkway collapse came from an unapproved design
change in the walkway structure. This was magnified through a laissez-faire approach of
supervision, ownership of responsibility, and a lack of cross organizational
communication.

The engineers and engineering teams assigned to this project were placed in silo-type
hierarchies that worked well within their respective groups but lacked communication
and clear standard operating procedures that let information fall between the cracks when
being pushed to different teams.

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 Changes on site are nothing new. The data the engineering and design teams have at the
time of creating their drafts aren’t always fully completed ideas and sometimes
assumptions have to be built into the plans. When changes need to be made, onsite
personnel will make the adaptions as required.

In the case of the hotel walkway failure, these changes were made and communicated
within the team, but were never forwarded up to be signed off by a different engineering
firm tasked with overseeing the entire project.

Why this is a difficult Human Resources problem. In this case, there were multiple firms
assigned to the project. Each their own company outright with their own HR departments.

3) Recommend how you would use the human resources for an alternative course of
action regarding your case.

The tricky situation is striking the right balance of safety checks while also enabling the
job to be complete. The often-repeated manta “Safety First!” is a great statement to help
drive home the need to be cautious. However, if we war game this out in our head we can
also see where one can be seen cautious in their approach that it can have the opposite
effect. Striking the balance is key.

In this case, HR can provide solutions by hiring quality assurance and safety engineers
with project management experience to oversee the safety oversight program. A program
such as this would focus on implementing safety checks at various stages of the project
while working with construction and design teams to design processes for better flow of
communications and redundancy checks on design changes.

4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently give what you have learned
about this frame.

As alluded to above, the difficult part of this project not only for me, but for the
investigator that performed this task was the challenge of untangling the web of
responsibility for the design failure.

One simply has to tune into the Home and Garden TV network to see the complexities
and large muscle movements in coordination that are required to flip a house. The
countless contractors and subcontractors involved in making sure the scheduling is done
right can be an extremely complicated process. The house example illustrates the
complexity of the task, a large multifloored hotel can suddenly become infinitary more
complex.

The complexity further becomes a problem when you have different engineering firms
responsible for different parts of the hotel. Structural engineers, electrical engineers,
mechanical engineers, and countless other professionals all belonging to different firms
working diligently on their sliver of the project. It becomes a difficult HR problem when

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you reach a different company to ask about their employees. In this case, it’s an all or
nothing. You are hiring the firm, not the employees.
However, there are still safeguards that can be put in place. Conducting an audit, even if
performed internally by the company, can be helpful. Even if it’s just providing all the
proper certifications and professional license required to hold these positions. Just the
verification alone could help set conditions for a climate of being throughout.

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 Reference or References

Moncarz, P.D., & Taylor, R.K. (2000). Engineering Process Failure—Hyatt Walkway Collapse. Journal
of Performance of Constructed Facilities, 14, 46-50.

Morin, C.R., & Fischer, C.R. (2006). Kansas City Hyatt Hotel skyway collapse. Journal of Failure
Analysis and Prevention, 6, 5-11.