Building a roundwood/cob hybrid home in Texas – roof beam collapse & lessons learned

Hi everyone,
I’m Mike, and my wife Nalini and I are building a circular cob/straw bale hybrid home (“Cob Mahal”) in East Texas.
We’ve been working through post and beam framing using roundwood, and got into raising the roof beams. We actually tried adapting a tractor boom idea (inspired by Paul Wheaton) to lift the outer circle beams without a crane, which worked.

However, on our second day lifting inner circle beams, using a SkyTrak, the fourth beam caused the previous three and four posts to rack and collapse. Everything we had raised that day ended up back on the ground in a few seconds.

A few takeaways so far:
Our bracing on the inner circle posts wasn’t sufficient for lateral load during beam placement
We underestimated how much force the beam could introduce while being maneuvered
Sequence and temporary stabilization matter more than we realized
We regrouped, rethought the bracing strategy, and continued from there—but it was definitely a humbling moment.
I’m curious how others here approach:
Temporary bracing for roundwood post systems during beam placement
Safe sequencing when lifting beams with or without a crane
Any “rules of thumb” you’ve developed for avoiding racking failures like this
We’ve been documenting the whole build, including that collapse moment, here if anyone’s interested:  
Appreciate any insights—this community has already been a huge resource just from reading.
– Mike

Wow Mike! No one was hurt - that's the main thing. Not a moment to forget I expect. Hopefully we can all learn from your experience. I suppose with straw bale walls there isn't the space (or need) for bracing except in construction.
The building is huge! Is it going to be two stories? I hope the rest of the build goes well.

Thanks Nancy! Yes, we wanted to build our roof first, before we even got our straw bales, so we could keep them dry. I'm very glad we did!
Building such a big house has a lot of huge drawbacks. Every stage of the build took forever! And, yes, it has a second story loft. We built it tall to take advantage of natural ventilation. Hot air rises, so we eventually want to build a small cupola at the top of our upper octagon to suck the hot air out of the house.

The main lesson we learned was to brace each post with diagonal temporary braces (kickers). Once we did, it all held up,and we got our roof built!

I'm just checking out the rest of your videos Mike - really helpful. I'm looking forwards to seeing the finished structure!