DailyDirt: A Long Time To Make Really Big Stuff… (original) (raw)

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 6.4billion(welloverthe6.4 billion (well over the 6.4billion(welloverthe1.3 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