The Metropolitan Transportation Commission's independent expert panel that reviewed the 2018 brittle fractures in twin built-up plate girders at San Francisco's Salesforce Transit Center—and made recommendations for changes to steel standards and specifications—was not charged with establishing culpability. The 1.2-million-sq-ft hub, owned by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, reopened last July 1 after a nine-month closure triggered by the girder failures.
The MTC convened the seven-person expert panel in October 2018 for several reasons, among them to review the failure hypothesis in the report of TJPA's forensic engineer-metallurgist, LPI Inc. But the MTC panel’s scope did not include an independent analysis of the cause of the failure or the assignment of liability.