The Deposition

A deposition is a test. It is not the trial — the trial is the ultimate load — but the deposition is the proof test, the controlled application of force to a structural element to verify its capacity before it is subjected to the full design load, and the force in a deposition is applied by an attorney whose job is to find the weakness, the crack, the point where the capacity is exceeded and the element fails, and the element in this case was Ada's report, and the force was the questions, and Ada sat in a conference room on the thirty-seventh floor of a building on LaSalle Street and received the force.

The conference room was at Schiff & Brennan, Hardin's attorneys. The room was paneled in walnut, not because walnut was structurally superior to other finishes but because walnut conveyed solidity, authority, the material equivalent of a bass note, and the table was walnut too, long and heavy, a conference table designed to seat sixteen but occupied today by seven — Ada and her attorney, Paul Terzian, a litigation partner at the firm that represented Alford & Associates; the court reporter, a woman with a stenotype machine whose fingers moved continuously like the mechanism of a clock; the videographer, who operated a camera mounted on a tripod at the end of the table; the attorney for the families, Diana Redd, who was observing but not questioning; and across the table, the two attorneys from Schiff & Brennan, Robert Schiff and a younger associate whose name Ada had heard and immediately forgotten because the name was not structural, was not relevant to the load path of the deposition.

And Hardin.

Martin Hardin was seated at the far end of the table, behind his attorneys, in a chair that was positioned such that Ada could not avoid seeing him and could not avoid being seen by him, and the positioning was deliberate, was the spatial strategy of the defense, the placement of the person whose reputation Ada's report had damaged in the line of sight of the person who had damaged it, so that every question would be answered in the presence of the face that the answer affected.

He looked old. Ada had not seen him in person since her thesis defense fifteen years ago, and the interval had done what intervals do — accumulated, deposited its sediment, changed the geometry. He was seventy-four. His hair was white, fully white, and thinner, and his face was narrower, the cheekbones sharper, the eyes set deeper in sockets that were more pronounced, and Ada thought of section loss, of the reduction in cross-section that occurs when a material deteriorates, the steel thinning as it corrodes, the concrete flaking as it spalls, and the person thinning as the years accumulate, and Hardin was thinner, and the thinning was visible, and Ada saw it and noted it and set it aside because she could not carry the weight of his appearance and the weight of the deposition simultaneously, the combined load would exceed her capacity.

He was wearing a suit. Dark grey. White shirt. A tie that Ada did not look at closely because looking closely at any part of him was an act of assessment and assessment was what she was here to provide about the building, not about the man.

Robert Schiff began.

"Dr. Nowak, you are a licensed structural engineer in the state of Illinois, correct?"

"Correct."

"And you are employed by Alford & Associates as a senior forensic engineer?"

"Correct."

"And you were retained by the City of Chicago to investigate the collapse of the Lake-Wabash parking structure?"

"Alford & Associates was retained by the city. I was assigned to the investigation as the lead engineer."

"Assigned by whom?"

"By Richard Alford, the principal of the firm."

"Were you assigned specifically, or were you one of several engineers who could have been assigned?"

"I was assigned specifically. I am the firm's most experienced forensic engineer."

"And you are a former student of Professor Hardin's?"

"I studied under Professor Hardin at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 2006 to 2009. He was my thesis advisor."

"Would you characterize your relationship with Professor Hardin as close?"

Ada's attorney, Paul Terzian, stirred beside her but did not object. In a deposition the rules were looser than at trial, and Terzian had told her beforehand to answer every question unless he explicitly instructed her not to, because refusing to answer created the impression of evasion, and the impression of evasion was worse than any answer.

"I would characterize the relationship as professional. Professor Hardin was my teacher and my thesis advisor. I admired his work. I learned from his teaching. After graduating, I had minimal contact with him. I did not maintain a personal relationship."

"You admired his work."

"I did."

"Would you say that his work — his teaching, his textbook, his professional reputation — influenced your career?"

"Professor Hardin's teaching influenced every structural engineer who studied under him. I am one of many."

"But he called you his best student. Isn't that correct?"

Ada felt the question arrive the way you feel a load arrive — the increase in the demand, the increase in the stress, the structure responding — and she let the response be structural, let the response be the precise and limited transfer of information that a connection provides, nothing more than the force that passes through.

"He said that to me once, yes."

"And when you received the assignment to investigate a building designed by the man who called you his best student, did you consider whether there might be a conflict of interest?"

"I discussed the matter with Richard Alford. We agreed that my professional qualifications were the appropriate basis for the assignment, not my educational history. We also agreed that the report would be co-authored by a second engineer, Sabrina Okafor, as an additional measure of independence."

"Did Ms. Okafor independently verify your findings?"

"Dr. Okafor reviewed the analysis, checked the calculations, and confirmed the conclusions. Her name is on the report."

"Did Dr. Okafor identify any finding that you missed?"

"No."

"Did Dr. Okafor disagree with any of your conclusions?"

"No."

"So Dr. Okafor was a rubber stamp."

Terzian spoke. "Objection to the characterization. You can ask whether Dr. Okafor's review was independent."

"Was Dr. Okafor's review independent?" Schiff asked, the question reformulated but the implication preserved, the lateral force redirected but not reduced.

"Dr. Okafor's review was independent. She reviewed the original documents, she reviewed my analysis, and she performed her own verification calculations. Her verification confirmed the findings."

Schiff nodded. He opened a binder and turned to a tabbed section. Ada could see the pages — copies of her report, with yellow highlighting and marginal notes in a hand she did not recognize.

"Dr. Nowak, let's discuss your analysis of the wind loads. You used Exposure Category C for the wind load calculation. Is that correct?"

"Correct."

"The original design used Exposure Category B. Is that correct?"

"Correct."

"Can you explain why you used a different exposure category than the original engineer?"

"The building code allows the engineer to determine the exposure category based on the surface roughness of the terrain surrounding the building. Exposure B is appropriate for urban and suburban terrain with closely spaced obstructions. Exposure C is appropriate for open terrain with scattered obstructions. The site at Lake and Wabash is on the eastern edge of the Loop, with the former Illinois Central rail yards to the east, which in 2002 were open land. I judged that the site exposure to the east was more consistent with Exposure C than Exposure B."

"But reasonable engineers could disagree on this point?"

"Reasonable engineers could have different judgments about the exposure category. Both B and C are defensible positions."

"And if Exposure B is used, the demand-to-capacity ratio for the critical connection drops from 1.47 to 1.12. Correct?"

"Correct. However, 1.12 is still greater than 1.0, which means the connection is still overstressed, still has no factor of safety, and still fails under the time-dependent effects of creep and corrosion. The report includes a time-dependent analysis showing that the connection fails at approximately year eighteen under Exposure B loading."

"You're saying that even with the more favorable wind load, the building was doomed from day one."

"I'm saying that the demand-to-capacity ratio exceeded 1.0 under both exposure categories, and that the connection had no factor of safety under either assumption. The building was structurally deficient from the day it was built."

Schiff paused. He looked at his notes. The pause was tactical, the attorney's equivalent of an engineer rechecking a calculation — not because the number was wrong but because the next step depended on the number being established.

"Dr. Nowak, you have identified the root cause of the collapse as a design error — specifically, the omission of gravity loads in the analysis of the east wall. Correct?"

"Correct."

"And you attribute this error to the engineer of record, Hardin & Keane, and specifically to the structural calculations prepared under Professor Hardin's supervision. Correct?"

"The error is in the calculation package. The calculation package was prepared by Frank Keane and reviewed by Martin Hardin. The drawings bear Martin Hardin's stamp. The professional responsibility for the design rests with the engineer of record."

"But you spoke with Mr. Keane. Informally. Off the record."

Ada's attorney looked at her. She had told Terzian about the Rockford visit. Terzian had said it was fine — the conversation was not privileged, was not confidential, was a professional inquiry — but Terzian had also said to be precise about what was discussed.

"I met with Mr. Keane to discuss the design process. The meeting was informal. I did not record it. I did not include Mr. Keane's statements in the report because the report is based on documentary evidence and engineering analysis, not on interviews."

"But Mr. Keane told you that the error was his."

"Mr. Keane acknowledged that he prepared the calculations and that he did not update the gravity load analysis when the beam at grid line F was replaced with a wall."

"So the error was Keane's, not Hardin's."

"The error originated in Mr. Keane's calculations. The review of those calculations was Professor Hardin's responsibility. The stamp on the drawings is Professor Hardin's stamp. The professional liability is determined by the stamp."

"In your opinion."

"In my professional opinion and in accordance with the Illinois Structural Engineering Practice Act, which states that the licensed professional engineer who affixes his or her seal to a document assumes responsibility for the accuracy and adequacy of that document."

Schiff looked at her. The look was the look of an attorney who had reached the end of a line of questioning and found it terminated in a wall — not a shear wall and not a bearing wall but a retaining wall, a wall designed to resist lateral pressure, to hold the earth back, to prevent the slope from failing — and Ada was the retaining wall and the earth was the argument and the argument was pressing against her and she was holding.

"Let's move on to the construction phase," Schiff said.

The deposition continued for four hours. Schiff asked about the inspection records, about Donald Voss's note, about the Roth condition assessment, about the owner's failure to perform monitoring, about the corrosion, about the waterproofing, about every contributing factor except the design error, because the strategy was to surround the design error with contributing factors, to dilute the design error in a solution of other failures, to reduce the concentration of blame on Hardin by distributing it among the other defendants.

Ada answered every question. She answered with precision and without elaboration and without emotion and without looking at Hardin except once, near the end, when Schiff asked a question about the standard of care and Ada answered and in the pause between the answer and the next question she looked at Hardin and Hardin looked at her and the look that passed between them was the look of two people who understood structural failure, who had studied it together, who had stood in lecture halls and conference rooms and damaged buildings and talked about the ways things break, and the look was not hostile and it was not warm, it was the look of recognition, the mutual acknowledgment that the forces were real and the structure was stressed and the outcome was uncertain.

Hardin looked away first.

The deposition ended at 4:30 p.m. The court reporter packed her stenotype. The videographer disconnected the camera. The attorneys shook hands in the perfunctory way that opposing attorneys shake hands, the handshake being the connection detail of the legal profession, the joint that transfers nothing but courtesy.

Ada gathered her papers. She stood. She walked toward the door.

"Ada."

She turned. Hardin was standing by the window at the far end of the conference room, his attorneys talking in low voices near the table, and he was looking at her with the eyes of a seventy-four-year-old man who had spent four hours listening to his former student describe the failure of his work, and the eyes were the eyes of a structure under load, a structure that was carrying more than it was designed for, and Ada could see the stress, could see the deflection, could see the creep.

"Professor Hardin."

"You did well. Your testimony was precise. Your analysis is sound." He paused. "You were always my best student."

Ada looked at him. She looked at the face that had aged and the body that had thinned and the suit that was dark grey and the tie that she still did not look at closely, and she heard the sentence and the sentence was a dead load, the weight of his approval unchanged by the investigation, unchanged by the report, unchanged by the fact that the approval was now inseparable from the error, that the teacher who had praised her had also made the mistake she had found, and the praise and the mistake were both permanent, both part of the record.

"Thank you, Professor Hardin," she said.

She left the conference room. She took the elevator down thirty-seven floors — the floors of the building descending past her as the car dropped, each floor a structure carrying its load, the building sound, the building adequate, the building designed by an engineer whose calculations she had not checked because you cannot check every building, because the system depends on trust, because the stamp is the stamp — and she walked out onto LaSalle Street into the late-afternoon light and the light was golden, the May light slanting low through the canyon of the financial district, and she stood on the sidewalk and breathed.

The deposition was over. The proof test was complete. The element had held.

She walked to her car. She drove home. She parked in the garage. She looked at the columns.

She went upstairs. She sat on the couch — not the desk, not the table, the couch, the piece of furniture that was designed for rest, for the removal of the live load, for the periodic reduction in stress — and she sat and she did not work and she did not think about the report or the deposition or the ratio or the stamp or the names, she thought about nothing, or she tried to think about nothing, and the nothing was hard to achieve because the mind was an engineer's mind and the engineer's mind does not rest, the engineer's mind assesses, and the assessment was continuous, and the only way to interrupt the assessment was to give the mind something else to assess, something that was not a building and not a failure and not a demand-to-capacity ratio.

She thought about pierogi.

She thought about the dough resting on the counter, the specific repose of a ball of dough that has been mixed and kneaded and set aside to hydrate, the gluten relaxing, the structure becoming more workable, more amenable to rolling, and the rest was necessary, the rest was part of the process, the rest was the period of reduced stress that allowed the material to stabilize, and Ada was the dough, and the deposition was the kneading, and the evening was the rest.

She rested.

The building held. The evening passed. The live load of the day diminished as the hours accumulated, each hour a slight reduction in the stress, the demand curve dropping, the capacity holding steady, and by the time the dark came Ada was below the threshold, was back in the safe zone, the factor of safety restored, temporarily, the margin between her demand and her capacity sufficient for the night.

She went to bed. She slept. The building held her.

Tomorrow the live load would return. Tomorrow the questions would continue in a different form — not the attorney's questions but the world's questions, the media's questions, the profession's questions, her own questions. Tomorrow the load would be applied again and the structure would respond again and the drift would continue and the creep would advance and the factor of safety would fluctuate and Ada would carry what she carried.

But tonight the live load was removed.

Tonight the building held only the dead load.

And the dead load, for once, was enough.