What would cause a building to shake?

[Frederick Skelly]

Good on you John! Your courage and integrity may well have saved lives.

Not saying it's ok by any measure, but corruption in civil works projects is an ancient vice. I've read of cases in Rome and I'll bet there were cases in Greece, Egypt and Babylon.

[Mark Hennebury]

People talk about all of the reports of shoddy construction from China, but China probably does ten times more construction projects than any other country, and the do them ten times faster.

Corruption is everywhere, you don't have to look far.

My father got a lot of pressure to sign off on a construction project, that he was supposed to inspect, but it was done before he got there; a concrete pour, if i recall. He refused to sign off because he didn't get to inspect it, and the job was halted. He got called in the bosses office and "pressure/threatened" Meanwhile a few guys in the same department were arrested for receiving gifts and paid vacations from contractors.

Funny that you mentioned Nuclear Power Stations. My father also worked at Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in the south of England way back, we had bunches of concrete core samples, probably still a few of them at the old house.

We are all human, and temptation is strong. Pressure immense. Turn a blind eye, what's the harm? look at the rewards for you and your family. It's a tough row to hoe being honest. it takes gut's to take a stand, especially when you see what it will cost you. There are no rewards for honesty. A conscience is the most expensive thing that you will ever own.
The best chance that we have is for us all to cultivate a conscience, but in the meantime, checks, balances and consequences will help.

I've been a concrete inspector, in-shop steel fabrication inspector, bridge and building steel construction inspector in the field, NDT tech and inspector (xray, mag particle, ultrasonics, dye penetrant, etc), and welding inspector (and I may have forgotten some others).

At every step there was opportunity to streamline the work by "overlooking" defects in exchange for money or other benefits, ESPECIALLY in nuclear power plant construction where 10s of thousands of $$ were on the line if a single defect deep inside a heavy-wall pipe weld caused it to be rejected. Even the concrete business could get testy: we once rejected the concrete on a foundation on a 1/2 completed parking garage based on lab cylinder compression tests - the concrete had to be torn out and replaced at great expense. Some contractors seemed frustrated (actually really ticked off) I and others I worked with refused to play the game. I knew an inspector or two I wondered about...

JKJ