[By Shideh]
I am auditing an awesome course on “human behavior and organizational factors, …” with Professor Bea, here in Berkeley’s civil engineering department. He’s an amazing lecturer, one of those professors that you just can’t forget.
Here’s one of his quotes that I’d like to share with you:
“You have the power of God in your hands, as engineers. You can save lives and of course can easily take lives when your design fails. Based on 50 years of experience as an engineer having witnessed many failures, I tell you now that almost 80% of all engineering breakdowns happen because engineers are not well trained in dealing with people and fail in effective communication and management.”
Tehran Shake 
interesting, and so true! it’s the same case in technology design.
It’s so very true!
When I was working in a petrochemical complex up untill a few months back, I came face to face with many such situations which demanded split second response to avert disaster…..and I must add the multitude of safety related (industrial) videos which we were made to watch on a regular basis are a real eye opener………Almost all had element of human failure…..be is design, logic, training, risk management…..in every aspect, there would be flaws.
Bhopal tragedy (MIC) is still fresh in the minds of most indians….
the recent BP refinery explosion in texas goes on to show that even the best out there are not 100% safe….