Thursday, April 10 | 3:30pm – 5:00pm CT

Special Session | Update on NIST’s Investigation of the Partial Collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida

NIST is investigating the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South (CTS) in Surfside, Florida, under the authority of the National Construction Safety Team (NCST) Act. The partial collapse of the condominium building is one of the most tragic structural failures in US history. The ultimate goals of the NCST investigation are to determine the likely technical cause or causes of the failure, and make recommendations for changes in building codes, standards, and practices, or other appropriate action to improve the structural safety of buildings.  

The NCST investigation is using advanced technologies and a highly integrated, interdisciplinary approach to investigate the failure and is organized across six projects: (1) history of the site, the building, and relevant codes and standards; (2) collection, preservation, and analysis of evidence; (3) remote sensing and data visualization; (4) materials science; (5) geotechnical engineering; and (6) structural engineering. 
This presentation will describe the Team’s systematic approach to analyzing its hypotheses of the causes of the failure through investigation at the collapse site, examination and testing of physical evidence extracted from the collapsed building, collection and analysis of documents, scans and reviews of other imagery,  interviews and focus groups of eyewitnesses and other stakeholders, reconstruction of the condition of the structure at the time of collapse, laboratory testing of full-scale replicas of components of the building, and advanced computer simulations of the collapse initiation and progression.   

The presentation will describe NIST’s Disaster and Failure Studies Program, the organization of the CTS Team, and its approach to the investigation.  The panel will summarize the Team’s investigative activities and preliminary results of analyses to date.  The talks will conclude with potential implications of the investigation’s findings for building design, construction, maintenance, and evaluation. 

Speakers:

• Glenn Bell, Research Civil Engineer and NCST Member, NIST
• Jim Harris, PhD, Principal, J.R. Harris & Company and NCST Member, NIST 
• Judith Mitrani-Reiser, PhD, Senior Research Scientist and NCST Member, NIST