The great Isambard Kingdom Brunel offering advice to an assistant, William Bell, as quoted in Brunel: The Man Who Built The World by :
You cannot take too much pains in making everything in equilibrio; that is to say that all forces should pass exactly through the points of greater resistance, or through the centres of any surfaces of resistance… Consider all structures, and all bodies, and all materials of foundations to be made of very elastic india-rubber, and proportion them so that they will stand and keep their shape: you will be these means diminish greatly the required thickness: then add 50 per cent Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Of course you add 50% 🙂 That’s what engineering is!