DailyDirt: A Long Time To Make Really Big Stuff…
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
In the software world, it’s widely known that throwing more people at a (delayed) project can make it take even longer to finish instead of speeding things up. (See Brooks’s Law) Maybe folks are learning how to cope with this management dilemma, but it looks like the solutions might involve throwing even more people AND more money to get projects to finish on time. The most practical answer, though, might be to come up with more realistic budgets and schedules. However, there are plenty of examples that practical proposals are not forthcoming. Here are just a few construction projects that have faced delays, and we may still have to wait a few years to see how they actually turn out.
- The new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is finally open — after the old bridge was demonstrated to be a bit unsafe in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The new bridge section cost about $6.4 billion (well over the $1.3 billion projected budget in 1996) and took a decade longer than expected. The result may not be perfect, but what is? [url]
- Bridges might take some time to build, but it’s nothing compared to tunnel construction like the New York City Water Tunnel No. 3. project NYC’s Water Tunnel No. 3 project was approved in 1954, started in 1970, and is expected to be complete in 2020 (at a cost estimated over $6 billion). [url]
- The 202-story Sky City was supposed to be the tallest skyscraper in the world — with an ambitious goal of being built in just 90 days, but it’s been delayed indefinitely. The building was designed to be constructed using pre-fabricated modules, and the tycoon behind this skyscraper, Zhang Yue, promises it will be completed in mid-2014. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: bay bridge, brooks' law, construction, hyperloop, sky city, skyscraper, tallest building, tunnel project
Comments on “DailyDirt: A Long Time To Make Really Big Stuff…”
Bay bridge...
I remember when that bridge section collapsed during the worlds series. Wow. Didn’t think it’d take that long to make a new bridge.
Re: Bay bridge...
When you don’t have the money or political will, things take long to make.
But maybe some day people will be able to do something about it by just printing all the parts at home 🙂
All The Things Which Are Involved in Building a Highway or a Railroad.
I have in front of me an old textbook of highway engineering (Leo J. Ritter and Radnor J. Paquette, Highway Engineering, 3rd. ed., 1967, 782 pp.), and I reproduce the table of contents with comments:
1. Introduction
2. Highway Administration (a brief tour of the public road agencies)
3. Highway Economics and Finance (stuff like cost-benefit analysis)
4. Highway Planning (market research, with emphasis on long-term prediction)
5. Geometric Design of Highways (translating desired horizontal and vertical acceleration into curve dimensions)
6. Highway Soil Engineering (a road is no better than its foundations, obviously)
7. Drainage and Drainage Structures (and if the soil is not kept dry, it will wash out from underneath)
8. Surveys and Plans (making a detailed map of the proposed route)
9. Contracts and Supervision
10. Earthwork Operations and Equipment
(everything up to this point is identical for railroads, “hyperloops,” or whatever)
11. Bituminous Materials
12. Flexible Pavement Design
13. Soil-Stabilized Roads (gravel roads, which are also the foundation for an ordinary railroad or a pipeline)
14. Macadam Roads (ditto)
15. Bituminous Surface Treatments (railroads sometimes insert a layer of asphalt to keep the soil dry, and to prevent the gravel ballast from commingling with the dirt underneath)
16. Road-Mix and Plant-Mix Surfaces
17. High-Type Bituminous Pavements
18. Design of Concrete Pavements
19. Construction of Concrete Pavements (but sooner or later, a really high speed railroad requires steel-reinforced concrete, like an airport runway)
20. Highway Maintenance
testing 1, 2, 3
bcz it’s here