What is Retirement ?

[zhangwuji]

Sorry to sidetrack a bit here: Yes, our SMRT standard has much room for improvement. I couldn't believe it when I saw on TV that they were actually using nylon cable tie to secure the "hook" made of cast iron. I am not a mechanical trained engineer, but I can understand that in order hold 2 object together, we need something stronger or harder to do the job. For example, if you need to hold 2 piece of metal together with bot and nut, the bot and nut must be made of material stronger then the 2 pieces of metal. That showed the qualification of the engineers SMRT is having. As if did not looked bad enough, our CNA reporter commented that it was a "tried and tested" method. My foot!

It's a pretty common practice for temporary solution for holding things together. These nylon cables are very strong(you can add a few more if you want) and come with different sizes.
http://www.newark.com/pdfs/datasheets/spc/TA-1224.pdf. The tensile strength can easily go up to 55kg.

Bolts, nuts and customized fixtures cannot be designed and indented overnight but MRT needs to run trains the next day.
I will expect them to slowly replace the nylon cables with permanent fixtures.

Nylon cables will become brittle(especially under the sun) over a long period of time. But, it takes a long long period of time.

I am no expert in material studies. But being in the electrical industry for close to 30 years since day one of my working life, I know what a cable tie is good for. In fact, they were one of the must have item in my tool bag. I have plenty of them in my home utility tool box at home right now.
SMRT did not mentioned that it was a temporary. In fact it became a PERMANENT solution until the subsequent break down occurred. If you read the inquiry report, it commented that it was the WRONG to use the cable tie for that specific purpose. It was a simply a design fault that no one want to admit. Period.