Imagine being a parent of a beautiful 6-year-old who just graduated kindergarten and to celebrate, you take her to a newly constructed local hotel resort. At the hotel, she sees an outdoor water fountain, grabs a metal railing encircling it and 120 volts of electricity shoot through her tiny body. In an instant, her life and those of her parents are forever altered.

In June 2018 at the newly constructed MGM National Harbor Casino Resort, this tragically happened to young Zynae Green. According to engineering reports, the railing she touched had been improperly installed. Was it a latent defect, a failure in contractor workmanship that the developer could not have known about before the structure was turned over?  A latent defect would absolve the developer of liability for her injuries.  The family sued the hotel, general contractor and electrical contractor. The case ultimately settled. Before settlement, however, the defendants did what was often the case when construction defects are exposed – point fingers.

As these posts have highlighted, when there is inadequate recordkeeping, contractors devolve into a game of finger-pointing. When the record of construction activity is not objective, not captured contemporaneous with build activities and is generally unreliable, it is difficult to establish liability with certainty or even catch mistakes before tragedy strikes. Burgeoning construction technology can change this, but will the industry adapt?

Who bears responsibility? The owner? The general contractor? The architect?

The workers who may have seen warning signs but stayed silent?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: many construction workers—particularly Black and Hispanic laborers who make up nearly 40% of the workforce—often stay quiet about unsafe or defective workmanship for fear of retaliation, blackballing, or job loss. The burden of “speaking up” is heavy when a paycheck determines whether your family eats.

Meanwhile, most project contracts allocate little budget for intentional, competent QA/QC practices. Errors and defects slip through, not always because no one saw them, but because the system relies too heavily on individuals raising their hands.

The result? Catastrophic deficiencies that surface only when lives are lost—or lawsuits are filed.

The industry can and must do better.

Objective, real-time data collection is the path forward. By standardizing QA/QC through auditable data—not whispers on job sites—we can remove the burden from vulnerable workers and provide owners with the transparency and accountability they deserve.

For project owners, investing in quality assurance isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s the difference between a safe, lasting asset—or a headline no one wants to read.

#Tiffanystales #constructionrisk #CTBIM #objectivedata #constructiontech #dataanalytics