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Source Code Dispute in Boston's Big Dig
JoshuaDFranklin writes "Boston's 'Big Dig' is famously long-running and over budget as noted before on Slashdot. But now Computerworld is reporting that a Software Ownership Battle Adds $10M to Cost of 'Big Dig'. The legal dispute was over whether Massachusetts had the right to share Transdyn source code with Honeywell, causing $2.72 million in damages and $7.2 million in costs of a four-month delay in the project."
The idea is to put in a 8-10 lane expressway under the city of Boston. They have a site at www.bigdig.com.
It has taken close to 20 year to do and has been extermly over run with greed, mismanagement, poor construction, and cost overruns.
.. that (at least in the UK) government overspends on IT is quite common, so I'm not overly surprised really.
http://www.computing.co.uk/news/1139418
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
So, let me get this straight: the problem was settled out of court for $350,000, but not before it had cost over $10 Million in over-runs and "damages".
Once again, a triumph for dumbasses in Project Management everywhere. I guarantee you nobody lost their job over this. Not having the foresight to either keep the code Open, or secure the rights to the code when the contracts were signed, they should be though.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
So, it's a bit like software development. then?
No but, yeah but, no but...
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Transdyn have a SCADA system called Dynac. Now Honeywell have a contract to build the next phase of the control system and Transdyn "refused to turn over the Dynac source code to Honeywell, claiming that the technology was proprietary". Do the Project Managers even know that SCADA software is almost always a trade-secret, like Windows or anything else? Just because Dynac had been modified as part of the project does not mean that it is state property, or Open Source or anything at all, unless the contract says that.
I stole this
(any geek here with a tunnel in his backyard?)
"/me puts tinfoil hat on and raises hand"
Why don't they just knock Boston down and then build the highway?
Someone hates these cans.
Well, that's what they did when they put the artery in the last time. This whole project is trying to repair that damage and increase traffic flow.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The Big Dig is a huge waste of money. When I was working out in Boston, Congress told Mass. "No more money" and then proceeded to fire the guy heading up the project. (This was about 5 years ago).
I watched them take down a bridge, then actually rebuild the same bridge. I don't know what exactly they accomplished, but it just seems like a stupid thing to do. There are so many unaccomplished goals, you would think that breaking down and rebuilding would be tasked for a later date while they focused on doing things that actually provided a tangible improvement.
When I think about Government Waste, I think about how my schools were run. Every school I ever went to from elementary school through college was wrought with waste and mismanagement - and those people all had a real desire to improve things. Now make the organization millions of times bigger with employees that could give a care and you end up with a trillian dollars in waste all from situations like this where it took months for somebody to say "hey, if this is costing us so much money wouldn't it make sense to just settle and move on?"
The apathy that government employees have is staggering. If half of the government organizations simply had one whistleblower that alerted the press about waste that they witnessed, we would... well, we'd be in the same situation because nobody would do anything about it... but theoretically we could reduce waste by billions of dollars.
Why is it that after all this time and all these budget overruns that the people of Mass. haven't just said "This is a bad idea. Lets kill it!"? Eventually, they'll just call the project done and we'll have another Bradley Fighting Vehicle on our hands.
The original bid went out in 1994 according to the article - which at that point access to source code was not a foreseeable issue for a lot of people in government purchasing departments.
Also, this project was slated to take nearly a decade, at which point it was more than likely that other software might be available that would be able to handle the task.
It's interesting to note that on top of the $10M, Honeywell upped their charge from a bidded $104M to $188M and explains away their cost overrun as a result of this dispute. So really, we're looking at now 94 Million Dollars being blamed on some poor schmuck in a purchasing department for not knowing that he should have included a source code clause in one of the 85 contracts he supervised that quarter.
Now the purchasing people I know would blacklist any contractors associated with that kind of catastrophe, but then again, I don't know any of the bozo's working on the Big Dig.
I understand that things can get out of hand occassionally and sometimes deadlines get missed and costs get to be over-budget. But nearly 100% over budget with no end in site? Just for this piece of the overall project that is wrought with this kind of thing? Maybe you shouldn't be hiring your project managers from the "welfare-to-work" program.
The Big Dig wasn't meant to make our commute any less arduous, it wasn't meant to educate our children, it wasn't meant to be anything other than a huge public works project which would inevitably become corrupted and suffer huge cost overruns- check out the history of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The whole point of the Big Dig was to free up the land where the above ground artery ran. This is a huge, nearly priceless benefit for Boston. Not only does Boston regain several billion of dollars in downtown real estate- but it re-attaches the North end and Longwharf to the rest of the city. Cut off from the highway, those neighborhoods were difficult and unpleasant to get to, and severely devalued by the big ass highway running right past them. The benefit will be to make a more livable, more walkable city, with a downtown worth visiting.
HTSI eventually managed to recover. Lockheed royally screwed up their contract with NASA so it was ended early and HTSI managed to win on recompetes - by slitting their own throats but that is a story for another day... HTSI negotiated a way to end their involvement in Big Dig early (I guess HTSI learned a lesson and will only get involved in federal level contracts). Rumors are that Transdyn are negotiating to get back into writing the code for Big Dig. Hopefully they will have better luck the second time around. I'm sure there are lots of helpful comments in the current source revs in the ITS software for whoever develops it (particularly Transdyn :P)
I particularly like that they paid some outrageous amount (millions and millions, 48?) for a lot for material disposal, never used it, (here's the kicker) gave it back to the previous owner for free!
No, that's not what happened. At least, not quite. They siezed a parking lot from Frank McCourt (IIRC) using eminent domain, paying him the value of the lot, according to whatever court determines such things. Supposedly they did not end up using it for materials staging (not disposal), and then sold the lot back to McCourt. They sold it back to him for less than they paid for it, 'tis true. McCourt is now looking to sell the lot himself at a large profit.
So, to clarify:
1. The Big Dig paid for the lot from McCourt after using eminent domain to force the sale.
2. It was to be used for staging.
3. The Big Dig sold it back to him, at a loss.
Mismanagement? To be sure. The worst part of the Big Dig? Nope, not by a long shot, in terms of cost, timeliness, risk exposure, nuisance for the city, etc.
Then again, I don't think that the Big Dig is as big a screw-up as everyone makes it out to be. It was an incredibly difficult engineering problem, full of suprises and risk. Furthermore, since Massachusetts pay $1.21 to the USA in income taxes for every $1 the USA spends in Massachusetts, I feel as if the other 49 states "owed" us the Big Dig.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I was having a conversation about this very topic with my brother in law the other night. He's a civil engineer who worked on the big dig for a number of years, until he decided to get out while his sanity was intact.
We were discussing the now infamous leaks in the tunnel. The basic reason the tunnel leaks comes down to politics. Back in the day, ordinary people were treated as less than pawns when transportation projects were planned. They'd think nothing of bulldozing an entire historic neighborhood if it made some phase of the project a bit easier. And they put roads whereever the straightedge put the line, and anything the line went over be damned. Douglas Adams fans are familiar with this attitude. Boston neighborhoods have suffered particularly from this way of doing things. The West End, which was an ethnic neighborhood very similar to the now toney North End, was simply leveled in the name of "slum clearance", which meant razing the cozy little brick neighborhood and putting up massive, antiseptic, windswept concrete structures. When the original Central Artery was planned, they did not have the chutzpah to raze the old Faneuil Hall and it's marketplace, but they did plop a huge highway down between it and the waterfront. This process delayed the redevelopment of the old industrial waterfront for years, probably cost the economy billions.
This process was so egregiously insensitive that entire political careers were made opposing transportation projects (how else does a guy like Mike Dukakis get to be governor?). People swore that never again would they destroy a neighborhood for the convenience of a transportation project. The political pendulum has swung so far the other way, that the decision was made when the new Central Artery was planned not to destroy a single building more than was physically necessary. As you know, in any engineering project, when one priority rises to the top, the others have to drop. That includes cost and water proofing.
The way to accomplish this priority was to build the new highway almost entirely within the footprint of the old one, while the old one continued to run, not to mention avoiding any disruption of Boston's utilties, some of which date to the 19th century. The process was compared to doing open heart surgery on a patient while the patient played a game of tennis.
Now, the leaks. In order to build the new tunnel more or less on the footprint of the old one, they excavated on the sides and built a slurry wall by injecting concrete into the excavation. Is it any surprise that it leaks? But, they did manage to build the thing without disrupting neighborhoods, other than the regular rerouting of traffic. And the artery, amazingly, actually does work -- traffic flows much better than it did before. And no building, no matter how old, unatrractive and decrepit, was taken down unless absolutely necessary, and cost be damned. But of course the tunnel leaks, and now Bechtel is stepping up and performing its predestined role as scapegoat. The rumors say that Bechtel was the best choice for this role because as a firm with strong Republican connections working on a Democrat instigated project, they wouldn't be sued quite as much.
And thus the political excesses of one era make up in a rough (but expensive) way for those of another.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.