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Big Dig - One of Engineering's Greatest Mistakes?
Enggirl1 writes "Design News discusses Boston's Big Dig and begs the question - is it one of engineering's greatest failures? The article reveals that forums and blogs are popping up all over the Internet as vehicles for engineers and contractors to discuss, under the guise of anonymity, their skepticism, thoughts and reactions to one of the biggest infrastructure failures in the news today." From the article: "One blogger, whose profile notes that he is an ICC Reinforced Concrete Special Inspector and an ICC Pre-stressed Concrete Special Inspector, among other specialties, says he has nearly 20 years of experience performing both placement and post-placement inspections of rebar, post-tensioning systems, concrete, masonry, etc. He says if structural engineers who specify epoxy for dowels and the like believe that the work is being done correctly then they live in a world unfamiliar to him."
I have a relative who is a civil engineer that has done high-profile (space program, public construction, etc.) work for both the public and private sector.
From the sound of things, I'd guess it's not an engineering failure so much as a management failure. The things I know about public construction are scary. Like when an engineer can't finish a design under the schedule that management wants, management steps in after hours, "throws in numbers" and tosses together a design, then sends it out with the engineer's seal on it. Or when an engineer refuses to sign off on an incomplete or incorrect design, the manager brings in a new graduate because they're more "cooperative" (read: will sign anything to get a paycheck) and they go ahead and build it that way.
The cost and political pressure in public engineering projects often leads to engineers being the least powerful people that have input in the design (i.e. ass backward).
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So it has a few bugs to work out. So it was delayed.
It beat Duke Nukem Forever and even Vista. It's probably better quality too, and will last much longer.
Patch it up and it'll be fine.
I think you'll find most of the problems with the big dig do not stem from any one dumb engineer, but the huge amount of contractors that are awarded contracts by the corrupt locat and state governments. No where in the world have I seen contruction contractors living so well as in Boston.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
One of the main problems the team had on the Boston Dig project was that some genius decided to hire the same contractors for both the construction and the inspection of the tunnel. Consequently, the inspector gets put in an awkward position, for if he finds anything wrong, he can either...
A) blow the whistle, cost the company extra money, and then get fired for "undisclosed reasons"
B) look the other way like a good little puppet of the company, get paid, and never have to really deal with the consequences face to face
Seriously, whoever thought that it was a good idea to hire the same company for both construction and inspection is a little naive. Would you let McDonald's do the FDA testing on their own food?
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
I believe that the question should be phrased differently. I would like to ask whether or not it is one of quality assurance's biggest mistakes. I routinely find work that was planned well and thought out well only to have a half way job done by whoever was checking work done by the lowest bidder to cut costs.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
that goverment officials are not spending their own money. That is why these big projects fail. They are more concerned with giving out the contracts to their campaign contributors and getting jobs for their union buddies than actually making things work. I think the model to follow is that of the DARPA grand challenge. The prize was $10 million as opposed to billions and the good to humanity (in the form of huge advancements in AI) were far greater in my opinion. Our government really needs to modernize the way they do business it is now the 21st century.
No Sigs!
Previous story on stupid engineering mistakes
The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge was a bigger mistake. It was actually destroyed. The big dig hasn't completely collapsed. (yet)
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Rock bolts are a staple in the mining industry. There are darn few failures. Of course the rock bolts are specified by engineers who work for the mining company and installed by miners whose safety depends on them. You tend to do things better if your life depends on it.
In the case of the big dig, you have contractors who are trying to make the maximum possible amount of money. I also bet that there weren't enough government inspectors or that they weren't properly qualified. Cutting costs is just as dangerous in the government as greed is in the private sector. The Canadian province of Ontario laid off all their government water inspectors and a bunch of people died in the town of Walkerton. If you don't give folks the tools they need to do a job then you shouldn't be surprised if the job doesn't get done.
The concrete ceiling tiles were used to create a separate space for supplying air to the tunnel. This is typically how you would do it in a building. In the case of the Chunnel between England and France, they dug a separate tunnel for that purpose. People have wondered why the panels had to be made of concrete. Something lighter would have worked just as well and might have been cheaper and safer.
As a Boston resident I've been following this semi-closely, and it seems that the main problem is not so much the engineering itself, but the way in which the overall planning occurred. This project was started in the late 1980's, and was supposed to cost something like $3 billion and take a few years. Now it has taken more than 16 years and cost tens of billions of dollars.
It wasn't just a bad estimate - it was that they gradually expanded the scope of the project and added new goals once the project was underway. As a result it took longer and cost more money. Then came the double-whammy - because it took so much time, and occurred at a time when people were moving back into the city making overall traffic worse, they had to revise the project again to make it even more ambitious. Otherwise, when it was done the traffic would still be bad and people would wonder why they spent so much time on a project that didn't solve the problem. So the Big Dig has always been in a race with time, which paradoxically has caused them to take more time than they otherwise would.
Most of the problems that have happened with the Big Dig have been due not to poor engineering, but use of the wrong materials and deliberate corner-cutting by the contractors. The woman who was killed a couple of weeks ago when the ceiling fell on her car died not because of poor engineering, but because the ceiling part was held up with substandard materials. They actually realized that this was a problem and changed the materials, but not before that part was built, and they never went back and fixed it.
So the contractors cut corners to make more money than they otherwise would, sometimes illegally. But my theory is that the underlying reason why they were able to get away with it is that the ballooning costs (remember it expanded by a cost of something like 900% in money and 400% in time) made accounting that much more difficult.
why doesn't the city of Boston take all of the goddamn bullshit parking tickets/tow fees they've collected from me over the years, and hire a competent fucking project manager for the big dig, instead of someone who's experience is probably limited to playing Pipe Dream for NES.
I believe it was more of a management failure. Being one of the biggest engineering projects in history, I don't think the planners took into account the massive scope of the work needed to be done. When you actually think that the idea of burying a highway system in the middle of a large city was actually presented and then accepted as a feasible solution, you have to wonder what city officials were "smoking" at that meeting.
:fingers crossed:
However, something needed to be done - as anyone who lives in or around Boston can attest. Taking the entire debacle that ensued during its construction, and the issues they've had since into account, I still think it's a pretty impressive project, and once they (if they) can iron out the kinks, I think time will prove favorable to project.
Of course, it could completely crumble over the next couple decades, and that outcome wouldn't surprise me much either.
"Like when an engineer can't finish a design under the schedule that management wants, management steps in after hours, "throws in numbers" and tosses together a design, then sends it out with the engineer's seal on it."
Falsifying records? When you accuse, you accuse big.
"Or when an engineer refuses to sign off on an incomplete or incorrect design, the manager brings in a new graduate because they're more "cooperative" (read: will sign anything to get a paycheck) and they go ahead and build it that way."
Sounds like your "graduate" will have the shortest career then. Or were you under the impression that engineers aren't held accountable to what they sign off on?
"The cost and political pressure in public engineering projects often leads to engineers being the least powerful people that have input in the design (i.e. ass backward)."
Sometimes the most powerful person is the one who says no. Not by changing the world, but by not being a participent in it.
As a disclaimer, its not like I am in any way qualified to have an opinion on this matter.
Now, as far as I kow, the big dig needed to happen, because Bostons traffic situation was essentially untenable. It was a daring solution, and one that was difficult, but at its core, it was probably the best idea to run with.
The problem is that someone wanted it done faster than was reasonable, or cheaper, or both. So corners were cut.
If the problems that currently exist are the sort that can be fixed with repairs, than all is not lost. It will just mean that an effort of pay only say, 80% of what it should have cost will instead cost 130%, plus the lives of a few motorists, and jail time for some people.
If the problems are not repairible, that is when things will get very intresting.
END COMMUNICATION
Another thing I would add to my previous post is that the irony is that the traffic alleviated by the Big Dig will come back within 5-7 years. The bottleneck for the Central Artery is the part where it actually goes underneath a skyscraper (technically it does this twice, but the other part isn't as crowded). They can't make it any wider there because it would eliminate the foundation of the skyscraper enough that the whole thing could collapse. This limits the size of the entire Central Artery and will eventually force the city to develop ways for people to get in and out and around using completely different traffic patterns.
The one major improvement to traffic that the Big Dig accomplished was diverting traffic going to the Airport through a separate tunnel (the one that just had part of the roof collapse). That reduced traffic in the Central Artery by something like 50%. Ironically, that was also the least expensive part of the Big Dig.
So what exactly is an engineer supposed to do? Add another factor of 4 or so tolerance to the design or something? Make the design even more expensive than it already is?? It already has to account for variations in materials strength, weather, overloading, safety factors, etc.
The more the engineer attempts to account for such things, the worse the actual implementation will get, as the contractors in question do even more shoddy, substandard work in order to make as much money as possible at the expense of the customer. After all, it's already accounted for in the design, right?
No. The engineer should design the structure to the best of his abilities to meet the stated requirements. It's not his problem if the builders can't get their shit together.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The big dig is still open and operating. That's hardly a failure.
y _collapse
Even if it eventually is a failure, the Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse in Kansas City killed more people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkwa
If engineers signed off on the use of the epoxy for the panel supports then those engineers are at fault. Engineers don't hand off designs to construction crews and wipe their hands of it from then on. They have to approve changes in the design and do their own inspections of the construction to make sure it meets the design.
Reading the article, I read the 14.6 billion dollar cost and thought, "Oh, I thought this thing was a lot of money." Then I remembered that is a lot of money. Not Bush-bashing or anything at the moment, but it's pretty impressive what the war can do to your concept of what is and isn't a lot of money being blown through by a government.
But then I'm assuming that's mostly not federal money, which would make it a really, really lot of money. But still.
"Seriously, whoever thought that it was a good idea to hire the same company for both construction and inspection is a little naive. Would you let McDonald's do the FDA testing on their own food?"
We draw slashdot moderators from the same pool as posters, and no one sees a problem with that.
"Was there a structural necessity to have big thick concrete panels on the inside of the tunnel," posts one reader. "My guess would be that it was not necessary.
That's what I wonder also.
Maybe not a complete engineering failure, but design plays a part. I would have assumed that the concrete on the inside of the tunnel would have been the structure of the tunnel itself, and so would have been under compression and self-supporting. What was the purpose of suspending big hunks of concrete above the roadway?
Wouldn't want to share a cubicle with you, man. Damn!
Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net...
One thing that has yet to be explained is why the engineers elected to suspend these massive concrete tiles from the cieling. Seriously, why did they need to be so thick and heavy? Or made of concrete for that matter? It just seems unnecessarily Damoclesian to have these slabs dangling from the roof of the tunnel.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
What are you talking about? Boston had the first subway in the U.S.
You've got to consider how fully planning even the smallest renovations is near impossible, let alone something of that scale. Watch a show where people flip houses; hell, start a case mod. A lot of this can be summed up in two words: shit happens. Don't get me wrong, there's no excuse for dangerously cutting corners, but no rational person can expect a project of any size to go exactly as planned, and certainly not tearing up half of the roads in Boston.
Anyone who's lived in New England for more than a couple weeks knows that the weather is totally unpredictable, and while that probably won't affect your dremel-on-metal experience, it can certainly screw with road construction. What if there had been an earthquake, and everything they'd worked on so far collapsed? Nothing you can really do to plan for that, and even less you can do to prevent it. I'd hope the final design is built to withstand a quake regardless of how uncommon they are in the area, but that doesn't mean it'll hold up to the same stuff while it's still under construction. While there weren't any Boston-area quakes or tornadoes that I know of, I'd be stunned if our typically-insane winter weather didn't cause some hold-ups (going beyond what was expected).
Corner-cutting isn't cool, especially not when it puts people's (millions!) lives at risk. Yes, plenty of what happened and caused these problems WAS inexcusable. But trying to cover all of what happened with that concept is just foolish. Things change along the way, for better or for worse, and you've gotta deal with them. They made some bad choices, but consider their situation - if you're over your budget by nearly an order of magnitude and your timeframe by a decade, both of which place an inconvenience and a burden on millions, are you going to consider cutting some corners to get things finished up quickly and relatively cheaply? Of course you are. The trick is to know how far into your corners you can cut; whether you're hiding a dent or a hole; whether you've cut off too much or just not sanded down the edges. That's where they really screwed up. They used makeup as a fix for something that needed plastic surgery. It's a start, but it's just not going to cut it.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
As usual with engineering disasters of this sort, the failure seems to have been caused by a confluence of lesser mistakes that would not have been tragic in isolation. The root causes, however, seem to be:
Anyone who has lived in Boston can tell you that this is only the latest in a string of cost overruns and management failures. The actual mode of failure (i.e. the bolts) and the immediate causes of that failure should not overshadow the idea that the contractors who screwed this one up should be held responsible. The ongoing investigations should reveal whether the contractors were merely incompetent or whether they willfully ignored problems like these and crossed their fingers that nothing would happen.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Maybe they should ask for a refund. Perhaps?...No?
...why an alleged 'engineer' would refer to rods as "dowels". Dowels are made from wood. A strange error for an engineer to make, doncha think? Unless of course he's not really an engineer at all.
Kind of like the guy who told me he was a 'physicist'. He was working behind the counter in a new age bookstore. Apparently if you read enough of those kinds of books, about things like the electric universe and shit, you're entitled to describe yourself as a physicist. Wow.
what that car was doing in just the right spot to get crushed?
What's the speed limit in that tunnel? What are the chances of getting hit?
I smell conspiracy theory! heh
An article stated that the concrete slabs for the roof were chosen because they cost less. I believe that the article stated that for this type of thing, other tunnels have used metal panels coated with ceramic. These type of panels are much lighter.
So it sounds like massive cost overruns leading to low cost components being chosen, failure to install properly where epoxy wasn't a good idea in the first place, recognition of the problem, and then the problem being left in place to avoid further expenses.
Oh well, mismanaged projects are nothing new either. No one talks about the pyramid they built 5100 years ago that fell down after 21 years, I suppose. I bet none of the appropriate heads will roll over the failures of the big dig, though. That's why my regime would require samurai honor code of corporate upper management and public servants. People would be more inclined to do a good job if they knew that they'd have to commit seppku if they screwed it up and brought dishonor to their post...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But in this case as in many, that responsibility wasn't backed by the authority the engineer needed to properly carry out that responsibility.
The exact story is still being discovered but it seems that the original builder was replaced by someone cheaper who cut corners.
In itself bad enough but stories are starting to emerge that this kind of stuff has been going on all over. Not a real suprise, we have had a couple of incidents of collapsing balconies because of shoddy building but because this scandale is so public the stories off other scandals also gets more attention.
Then again it is nothing new. Every time there is a disaster like an earth quake anywhere in the world you will learn that some building collapsed because the builder did not follow regulations or even the blueprint.
Cost cutting is almost everytime the reason and who is to blame for that? Well us. We want our buildings build as cheaply and as fast as possible so we hire the guy with the lowest contract and then expect to get quality.
Nobody on the world would expect a ten dollar watch to have the same quality as a ten thousand dollar watch so why do we expect the guy who can do the job for a million to be as good as the one who wants two million?
The fact that a live was lost in this Boston incident is tragic. That it involved such a god awfull amount of money makes it however fortuanlly headline worthy. If we a truly upset about this we will demand more and better inspection of every building project and demand very stiff penalties for those who ignore regulations. Oh and we won't mind paying extra for it.
Did you hear just hear that massive sound of everyone taking a step back? Yup, we want the best but at the least cost. That is how it is supposed to work in a free market. Sadly it doesn't.
Shoddy building by the lowest bidder is nothing new. Just because this one involves a costly project that has already been controversial does not make it new. Shoddy building will go on as long as contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder.
But why doesn't it work to go for the lowest bid? Because it is an ongoing race. There is always another party who wants the contract who is just going to have to find some way to lower costs. At a given point there is no more fat to trim and you have to start cutting in essentials. Think of it as anorexia. When all the fat is gone you can only loose weight by reducing vital organs and tissues until finally you die. In losing weight you need to know the limit, the point were you simply cannot loose weight anymore. In lowering cost you also need to know that limit. Were any further cost savings are coming from critical areas like following the blueprint to the letter, proper inspection and using the right materials. It can be as simple a something as continueing work on days to hot/cold/humid for some materials to properly set. A great cost saving but a gigantic risk.
This woman paid the price for our penny pinching and the great joke? Now the costs are going to be much higher to us all then if the job had been done right by the non-lowest bidder in the first place. Yet how much do you want to bet that in a few years time the next boston city goverment contract will again go to the lowest bidder?
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Ethics gets the short shift at every level of education, at least in America. I've graduated from High School, got an Associates Degree, not once took an ethics class. A little bit of ethics has to seep into classes, though and they hope maybe parents have some clue and just leave it at that. There's really not much of it though.
One person has already died as the reult of shoddy practices on the Big Dig.
Also, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge probably cost, at most, hundreds of thousands of Pre-WWII dollars. The Big Dig has already cost over $14 billion.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Probably the biggest mistake that ever happened in China at Shaanxi where the people had riddled the Loess Plateau with Yaodongs (dwellings). The earthquake of 1556 killed over 800,000 people, many of whome were crushed when the Plateau collapsed onto dwellings. Makes the Big Dig's problem seem pretty small in comparison.
Posting anon here - I worked on the Big Dig (environmental) during peak construction (1997-2000) and I'm currently contracting with another MA state agency, and I don't want to ruffle any state feathers. I also want to write a book someday ;)
First a couple of general statements:
Now back to the facts - I have no knowledge of roof panel construction (I spent little time in that area), but I will note that working on the project during 1999 and 2000 was an interesting experience. Already at the point there was heavy pressure on project managers and contractors to reduce costs (this was before the national stories hit that led to the ouster of James Kerasiotes). It got to the point that office supplies were locked up - you had to get the office manager's permission to get a notebook or pens!
In any event, I wouldn't be surprised at all if cost pressures let to reduced safety factors, etc. The construction site was also the source of many stories about various screw-ups that I won't get into here (wait for my book!). There was of course several times that money was spent to shut people up (at least once against my direct recommendation), but the PTB felt it was needed for the project to move along smoothly. I suppose that it would have been better for B/PB to take the Vista approach, and wait for the tunnel to be "finished" but that wasn't going to happen because of the political pressures.
Now was the project a failure? I'll just say this - is used to take me 1.5 to 2 hours to drive from Braintree to Cambridge during midday traffic. I did the same trip a month or so ago during a Friday afternoon rush hour in abut 20-25 minutes.
One of the problems with the Big Dig ceilings is that some of the engineers that designed it have never actually built anything. These guys must not have ever gotten their hands dirty on an actual jobsite. Their the guys in ties, hard hats and a slight look of confusion on an actual site. The book says epoxy has the strength, it must, use it. When the accident occured and it first came out that the bolts were epoxied in place, my first thought was "what kind of idiot makes suspended ceilings out of concrete, then tries to epoxy them in place?" Epoxy is a wonder material, but this is just so obviously not a smart use for it. No, i'm not an engineer.
s /2006/07/28/bolt_system_graphic/
I've got a running bet with anyone that'll take it that the Big Dig is closed down in less time than it took to build the beast.
My wife is a news designer for the Boston Globe, she made this graphic to explain what happened, it's pretty cool. No complaints about it being in Flash, that's what she uses:
http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/bigdig/article
Enjoy,
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Begging your pardon, but to beg the question is a philisophical term. Am I not allowed to use it? I'm just kind of wondering.
Being quick to take offense is not a virtue.
Wikipedia and M-W recognize that a shitload of morons make this mistake.
they have dug for themselves
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
"begs the question" means "raises the question with the predication that the question is already answered", and as such, this is a totally valid use.
Right here everyone talks about how great it is.
Thanks Michael Dukakis and John Kerry! money well spent.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Why does anyone think this was about traffic relief? From everything I've read over the last 6 years the whole project is about bribing officials so companies can steal money for substandard work. Sounds like a standard goverment project to me. They just had bigger thieves in the Boston crontractors guild, who did shoddier work than the norm.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
And I think they could also endeavour to teach you what "vernacular" means.
I wear the ring.
I wish I could find the ref. But I read an article stating that as cities grew in the 1800's they began choking on horse shit. A huge public health as well as transportation impediment. The car became the way to avoid a bad outcome. And it worked, at least for a little while. Now the car is the problem and we are searching for other solutions.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yeah, popularity is a great guide to correctness (*windows vs linux*).
I overheard half of a phone conversation this morning:
In some parts, that language is popular. Does it take an English snob to call that incorrect?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Silicone to hold those bolts was brilliant. How heavy are those concrete tiles ? Tons ?
Anyone remember the KC Hyatt disaster ?
>>Shouldn't your first clue have been a mass transit system for a city based on the automobile!!!
>
>What are you talking about? Boston had the first subway in the U.S.
Try cranking your head out of your ass, moron.
The main part of this stupidity was burying a highway to get it out of public
sight. which part of it had to do with extending or enhancing a subway?? NONE,
thanks for playing shit for brains, now go back to picking your nose.
I have a hard time in believing that the screw-up happened in the actual design. A professional engineer knows that he can be sued for malpractice and can go to jail for signing off a design diagram that is faulty.
The second aspect of the construction is the actual assembly of the project. There could be a problem here. According to a reputable source, about 14% of the laborers in the construction industry are illegal aliens. In some segments (e.g., roofing workers), the percentage of illegal aliens can be as high as 29%.
Most illegal aliens are people who hail from Mexico and who cannot read, write, or speak English. Even if we assume that they are all honest, they can still make honest mistakes when they cannot comprehend English. The warnings on the construction material, the recommendations on the construction material and the construction equipment, the instructions for assembly, and the like are all likely to be written in English. If you have no English skills, the probability of a screw-up is very high.
Watering lawns, trimming hedges, picking fruits, etc. do not require knowledge of English to do well. From a quality perspective, an illegal alien can do good work on such absolutely no-skill-required jobs.
However, welding a joint on a drawbridge, properly fastening a bolt to hold up a concrete ceiling, etc. might require some ability to comprehend English and might even require some minimal skills that a high-school education would provide. Most illegal aliens from Mexico do not have a high-school education. On any project that involves public safety, an English-speaking, literate, educated worker is much more preferable than a non-English-speaking, illiterate, uneducated worker.
In languages, usage defines correctness. Therefore it is correct, whether you like it or not. QED.
Sorry, no. Take for example the lazy use of "I could care less," when the speaker actually means, "I couldn't care less."
There's absolutely no ambiguity about the meaning of these words:
"I"
"could"
"care"
and, "less"
Except, because people don't actually think about what they hell they're saying, they mumble "could" when they mean "couldn't" in the same way that they sing along with a song, uttering words that they know make no sense (but which they've been too lazy to actually look up), just because they think that's the sounds to sing. Phrases have meaning, and the more complex the phrase, the more precise the meaning. Plenty of people use phrases that mean the opposite of what they're trying to say... but their doing so doesn't mean we could flip around the meaning of "not" to its opposite. "I could not care less" doesn't mean the same thing as "I could care less," no matter how many people say it because their friends do. Un-QED. Back to you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm a Kansas City native and have been in the very building that houses a plaque to those who died in the greatest U.S. engineering disaster of all time, the collapse of the skywalk in the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I'm also a student at the local community college and am studying architechtural design, so I've gotta a bit of an idea as to what goes on in the engineer's office on a day to day basis. This project, the "Big Dig" has all the characteristics of the 1982 Hyatt Skywalk failure: impossible deadlines, poor management, and overworked and stubborn engineers getting moved aside so newer more willing guys will sign off on the plan's. The problem with the Big Dig is that people who don't know a thing about structural engineering are dictating design, budget, and deadline's. And when their certified engineers run up Red Flags, they bring in the younger guys to solve the problem. And as others have stated, if the deadline isn't meet by the engineers, managment steps in and BS's it's way through the plan "shotguning" blank values to fill them. The only difference in the Big Dig and Hyatt failures is that they got caught because the structure failed and people were killed. And you know who gets blamed and takes the fallout for this kind of thing, engineers and public safety. In the Hyatt disaster, the cheif architect lost his liscense and job because his signature wasn't on the revisions that an ASSISTANT PROJECT MANAGER a.k.a. UNLISCENSED PROFESSIONAL, made to his design and he paid $12 million in fines because of it while the project managers were allowed a new contract to clean up the mess and rebuild a new skywalk. So the problem with big projects like the Big Dig and the Hyatt Regency Hotel isn't a lack of trained and certified engineers and architects, its a lack of control on the managements part to stay out of the engineers hair and leave them be so they can design a safe structure.
>I wish I could find the ref. But I read an article stating that as cities grew in the 1800's they began choking
>on horse shit. A huge public health as well as transportation impediment. The car became the way to avoid a bad
>outcome. And it worked, at least for a little while. Now the car is the problem and we are searching for other
>solutions
That is the history of most cities, but the point of my first post was that "WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR OTHER
SOLUTIONS". Over the past few decade a couple of systems where thought of, but every time any where actualy
tried, They where purpusly installed incorectly(by the local city planers/engeneers) to make them look like failures. They are afraid that if they do their job well there won't be as much need for them.
A dowel can be made of wood - and many are - but a dowel may be made of metal or any other rigid material. The majority of dowels are of circular cross-section and can be pictured as headless bolts . The function of a dowel is to retain two pieces of a construction in their respective positions. If the dowel used is not of sufficient strength, it follows that the respective positions of the two pieces of the construction will not be kept constant.
Having established the "picture" of a dowel as a headless bolt, it seems to me that another definition is required - that of a headless dolt . This is how I "picture" the originator of the parent post here. In my opinion at least, reading books is in no way injurious to the health of the reader and some of us should try this option - if only as a change from watching "The Simpsons" on TV
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
It was (yet another) a GOVERNMENT failure.
At the moment, there are 17 posts in this thread moderated to three or higher... and one of them is an Anonymous Coward grammar cop? WTF?! How does that get modded up three times?
you should see all the pictures of job sites that i have stored somwhere of construction in L.A. for the past 20 or 30 years. let's just say that i won't ever enter a high rise and when i take the subway i know where the "fault" lines are
I beg to differ. I'm not a structural engineer, but the idea that you hang 3-ton concrete panels from bolts attached to tricky-to-install epoxy anchors in the ceiling sounds insane to me. Have they never heard of that useful relative of the arch, the barrel vault?
And if for some reason that wasn't an option, why not think ahead, make the ceiling with some built-in rebar sticking out of the bottom, and attach the panels to those?
Sure, there was a management failure: it OKed this design! And construction failures may have played a role as well, but the core problem sure looks like poor design to me.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
The problem isn't one of changing usage, it's of namespace collision. 'Begging the Question' is the name of a specific logical fallacy. By claiming that it means something else, we are reducing the communicative capacity of the language. Tell me, when I want to refer to a logical conclusion being assumed in one of the premises, what do I say?
The same goes for the word "literally". That word has a well-defined, rather unique, meaning and by claiming it as something else, the language is damaged. It becomes more difficult to express a particular thought (that something actually happened, when the typical usage would imply that it merely happened figuratively).
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I trust nothing posted to the internet by anonymous experts. I know a student who passes himself off as an engineering professor in emails and bulletin boards.
What are you talking about? Massachusetts has the best politicians money can buy!
I've always thought it was kinda funny how the softhat guys could come up with an accurate schedule when the weather man can't even tell me for sure if it's going to rain tomarrow.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I don't want to hear people saying "why can software developers build software like building bridge" again. Big Dig proves beyond any shred of doubt that building tunnel IS like building software, with all the messy details ensured. On the other hand, why can we have $14.6 billion budget for software development?
The big dig is not a failure of engineering, it's a failure of bureaucracy and a corrupt local government.
Rod = metal, wood (although less common), synthetic (eg plastics, nylon, etc)
Dowel = wood
Pin = metal, wood, synthetic
After hearing about welders being rushed in the Bay Bridge east span project, I'm concerned about whether we'll see a failure similar to that in Boston's Big Dig, even when not considering the earthquake factor.
- 91 Swedish government decides the tunnel is to be built.
- 92 Banverket awards construction contract to Kraftbyggarna.
- 93 Tunnel boring machine "Hallborr" becomes stuck.
- 95 Kraftbyggarna leaves the project.
- 96 Contract to continue tunnelling awarded to Skanska.
- 97 Discharge consent exceeded. Rhoca Gil employed for fullscale
grouting works. High concentrations of acrylamide
recorded in the inflow water discharged from the tunnel.
The discharges unleash a crisis in the vicinity.
Banverket and Skanska stop all work on the project.
- 98 Tunnel decontamination works undertaken. Major sealing
works and a comprehensive environmental control
programme initiated.
Decision on the future of the tunnel referred to government.
Alternatives to the tunnels and alternative tunnelling
solutions investigated.
A new drill was bought, which began work and soon became stuck after a few meters I believe in the fall of last year. But they got it working again.No one talks about the pyramid they built 5100 years ago that fell down after 21 years
That's just because it's no longer news: Collapsed pyramid
Basically, the way our system works is that taxpayers from all over the country toss billions of dollars into a pot, and then elect politicians who fight to get money back out of this pot. The result of this system is the Big Dig, and bridges from nowhere to nowhere in Alaska, and that kind of thing.
The solution is to stop throwing the money into a big pot and then fighting over it. Massachuesettes taxpayers should pay for projects in MA. California taxpayers should pay for projects in California. Etc. If we did this there would be a lot more accountability, and projects like the Big Dig would never have happened.
Another variation of this idea would be to make a business analysis of these projects. If the Big Dig were a business, how much does it cost per user? Would users pay for it? How does that compete with other options, such as a) mass transit or b) doing nothing?
As long as we have the "huge pot of dollars that congressmen fight over" model, we're going to have disasters like the Big Dig.
Taxpayers, it is within your power! Fight for lower federal taxes and give state governments control over states.
It sounds like the panels needed to have a low Q (ability to absorb energy while flexing in this case) to prevent vibration problems when used in a simple mechanical design. Concrete would be the obvious material but the high mass has now been shown to be a big problem given how it was anchored.
The panels themselves are needed seperate from the structural surface they are mounted on to provide an area for air circulation.
it was a false ceiling. The only purpose was to hide the unsightly fans needed for air circulation.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The quote "can't have your cake and eat it too" is WRONG WRONG WRONG.
It's "eat your cake and then have it too" . Think about it, your usage describes dessert.
You are also arguing with yourself about the merits of a descriptive dictionary versus a prescriptive dictionary. The MW and Wikipedia entries are descriptive, meaning it approves of language drift in real time. The prescriptive, of which Oxford was but no longer, raps your knuckles with a ruler evertime you fuck up a phrase like "begs the question."
The regularity this discussion breaks out on Slashdot prompts the question: can the literal meaning of a phrase be incorrect usage ? You beg for your life, you beg for attention, you beg for money. So why couldn't a particularly stupid action beg a question ? Because the latin phrase referring to circular reasoning was once translated as "begging the question" ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"I beg you, my liege, have mercy!"
"No, grammar nazi pigs like you deserve no mercy. Off with his cowardly head!"
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
All language is inherently arbitrary. There's no real reason why "dog" should correspond to the animal that you and I think it means, it's just something we've agreed upon (probably unconsciously) as part of learning the language. If we could get together everyone who speaks English tomorrow and decide to pick a different word for "dog," then the new word we'd pick would be the 'correct' one. Or at least it would be 'correct' insofar as there is a correct term.
Language only has value if everyone understands and agrees what certain otherwise-meaningless utterances represent. So if you decide to use a different definition of a particular term than the one everyone else uses, it's not a question of who's "right" and "wrong," it's a matter of who's going to be understood by the most people among the intended audience.
More to the point, in the case of "begging the question," there are two meanings at work: one which is commonly used in the vernacular, and another rather specialized meaning, used within the realm of philosophical discussion. The 'correct' definition of the term depends on the context of its use. This really isn't that hard to understand -- there are many, many words and phrases which are similar: they have both commonly-understood meanings, and different or more particular meanings when used in technical contexts. That doesn't mean that the vernacular meaning is "more wrong" or "less correct" than the technical one, just that the phrase has two distinct meanings.
I think this discussion comes up here on Slashdot a lot, because there seem to be a lot of people around here who seem to be incapable of understanding that in natural language, it's quite possible for the same utterance or visual symbol to have a variety of meanings depending on the context it's being used in, and this context may be somewhat subtle. While these nuances may make understanding a little more difficult than some hypothetical Newspeak-ish, precisely defined language, it's the fuzziness that gives natural language its flexibility and descriptive power. Stop trying to pigeonhole it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
As Yoda might have said, "Break me a fscking give!" --
The big dig constitutes several of the most ambitious and complex infrastructure projects imaginable. They had to freeze the ground in the back bay by piping supercooled fluid through it while digging in that part. They have completely re-routed one of the largest transportation networks in the world without closing the old one (other than a few hours at a time at night or weekends). As the last phases are completed -- the cleanup of the old site -- Boston becomes one of the most beautiful cities in the world. What used to be a hideous elevated six lane highway becomes a walking park with small shops, museums, and playgrounds that connects the entire downtown area from Haymarket and Fanuel Hall past the New England Aquarium, all the way to South Station.
It was typically corrupt on a scale only an eastern (or European) city could manage, it was over budget and time on an epic scale -- but did anyone really expect otherwise? Someone really screwed up on these bolts. They'll get fixed, the lawsuits will settle, and in the meant time this project will be the pride of Boston for many years to come.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Begs the question now means "raises the question". That's what most people mean when they say it and that's how most people interpret it. Sorry, but the old timey version lost.
Yeah, you can find a lot of illegals doing roofs, painting, gardening, light construction and so on.
But the Big Dig used almost 100% union labor. Good luck trying to join a union if you are in the US illegally.
We wouldn't be in this mess today if I-695 (the Inner Belt) had been built. Route 128 is a parking lot for hours each day because of this massive planning failure, and a handful of tunnels in downtown Boston isn't the solution.
I sat down with a group of engineers living in the Boston area (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, etc), and we discussed the Big Dig tragedy. The civl engineer insisted that the design itself would work, but it would require the the drilling be done properly, all holes then cleaned correctly, and then the epoxy set set correctly. He then went on to say that this apparently did not happen.
What was more interesting was the ensuing conversation. What was brought up was that if everyone knew that this project was going to be given to contractors who were likely to cut corners, would this have been the best design? Judging from the results of cut corners (the local boston news has been covering that some holes have no epoxy in them and other blatant implementation failures), this design was not "fool-proof" enough given who was implementing the project.
We then brought up our own personal experiences in our respective fields where the best design was not the cleanest design, but the design in which if some one implemented it wrong, there'd be no unforseen consequences (such as making a routing change in one branch office, only to black hole traffic destined for another office). I wonder how many people here have been faced with projects where one of the bigger criteria was to make the implementation "fool-proof".
My father was an architect for many years and he has many examples of going to inspect sites and finding that the construction crew had misunderstood or wilfully ignored the specifications for critical structural components: columns incorrectly constructed for the projected load, or a pile of roof components rusting in a corner of the site and clearly not installed in the almost-completed roof. Building workers are fairly hazy on the niceties of engineering and are on the kind of contracts that make it attractive to get as much money for doing as little work as possible; they do, generally, though, have a "comfort zone" of familiarity with traditional construction techniques which is why most regular construction projects don't fall down.
Anyone specifying a new or unusual process has to be aware of the fact that the typical construction worker won't believe it's important to follow the rules exactly, won't understand which parts of the process are most vital and won't be around at the end of the project to take any responsbility. If you have a design that depends on technology unfamiliar to the people who're responsible for implementing it, then you need tight supervision during the build and tight inspection afterwards. You often don't get either - the foremen are on bonuses to accelerate the construction phase and the people most qualified to inspect afterwards are the people who designed the structure in the first place.
Of course there are many projects which are simply not feasible using traditional construction, but for those that are, any apparent savings from using new technology can be negated by the costs of ensuring it's correctly applied.
The eng-tips thread mentioned in the article:
& page=1
http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=159632
Anyone who has to build something that will be used by someone else should be subscribed to the Risks-Forum digest.
It's titled, "Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related Systems", and relates a lot of computer and general engineering related risks. Risks that either wind up killing or seriously injuring people. It's been going since 1985, and is a good read just to open your mind to what might happen.
As so many headlines on Fark read, "What could possibly go wrong?". This should always be the first thought for any engineer when they are tasked to do something.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
project: fast, easy, or cheap: pick two, Pick three and you won't like the result.
if a few people made heaps of money out if it, after all that is what America is all about.
The big dig is simply an ill-conceived use of resources. In another 10-20 years, the traffic will overwhelm the improvements again. Investing that massively in the city's public transportation infrastructure (including parking garages at the city limits) and limiting the number of cars would've been a much wiser overall investment, IMHO.
Maxim
all the dowel pins used to hold an engine in alignment during assembly. Which are ground steel.
So basically you are talking shit.
I'd trust a kid "off the farm" to be able to do construction work before about anyone else the same age. You grow up building and repairing big structures, welding, operating equipment that costs as much as most folks houses, etc you appreciate how to do things properly. Any random 20 year old kid off a farm might easily have ten years experience in what would be considered adult professional work in most of the trades. He's grown up wiring at high voltages, working on very large and complex plumbing installations, doing all sorts of carpentry, cement work, equipment maintenance, etc. It's a pretty thorough and complex process to keep a large farm operating. And today's farm kids are using automated and computerized devices, all the way to GPS enabled equipment that uses robotic steering. maybe it is past time to put that "country bumpkin" meme to rest, it no longer applies.
With that said,back on subject, that entire big dig project has a long history of controversy and accusations of weirdness around it. I am (somewhat) surprised it has taken this long to start to fall apart.
As to the illegals versus legals and so on, it's a crapshoot. I have worked on jobs with illegals that were a menace,totally incompetent and dangerous to be around, hired merely because it was a body to throw at a job for cheap pay obviously. A few have been quite good from recollection, most are pretty common, some skills, but a lot of enthusiasm. They come from a culture of lower resources, recycling old junk more, cob jobbing as normal, etc. I think it is just too large a variable to really be able to quantify it adequately. What can't be denied though, is that hiring illegals in a general sense is a cost cutting measure so the boss class can skim a few more bucks off the project, and when that becomes the primary focus on a job, the job suffers. Jobs should cost what they cost, not the lowest crap possible then cut corners from that point. You get your "problems" then. When you have something as important as a big dig styled project, you shouldn't screw up. If it is deemed to be unaffordable to do correctly, don't do it.
If your new garage roof sags and leaks after a few years because you hired the local cut rate guy with his "crew" of casual pickups from the home depot parking lot..well, it's no big deal to anyone but you and not a major threat. Something like the big dig is a totally different situation.
The Airport Tunnel may have been the cheapest part, but was it cheaper to build the tunnel or build a brand new airport that wasn't space constrained on an island? I think Denver cost about $5b to build in the mid 90's - the same time period that the tunnels were being built.
So now Boston has a tunnel that is collapsing on itself, and even if fixed will be inadequate to carry the traffic load, to get to an airport that can't build any more runways, so it won't be able to handle the capacity needs either.
Now that sounds like a great plan.
Engineering Tips is the website with the original online discussion, as referenced in the DesignNews.com story
link to original discussion
link to related items
Unrelated, but possibly of interest:
Link to their Computer Engineers area
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The amazing thing about the Big Dig is that it just isn't that big. It really is only a couple of tunnels under downtown Boston. Are they "big" tunnels? Yes - but not $14.6 billion worth! The T tunnels are much more extensive.
Remember the Denver International Airport boondoggle? For the price of the Big Dig, they could have had 3 DIAs.
When I lived in Boston, they were talking about extending the "Silver Line". Note: the "Silver" line is just a bus, unline the Red, Orange, Blue, or Green lines. The good people of Boston are expected to pay $700 million dollars for a BUS!
2 "If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser."
Hmm, that one slightly evolved over the ages didn't it.
Humans are not suited to cooperation on projects of this size.
The individual failure rates of human responsibility, conscientiousness, and honesty are high, as we know. A project like the Big Dig is large enough to cause those individual failures to fatally compound at a rate approaching 100%.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
The free market works--just not the way you were expecting. The market here rewarded the semblance of engineering quality, rather than the actual item. Better inspections might have uncovered this, but of course the market can only provide the semblance of better inspections.
This is why we require government regulation.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
The Big Dig's not on here, yet. ;-)
http://www.library.ubc.ca/scieng/engineeringfailur e/EngFailures.htm
Consider, for example, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; only one of them is left, wich gives us a 14.2% success rate.
Over a 5000 year scale, I could accept that. More important is that the Colossus of Rhodes stood less than a century, and most lasted only a few centuries.
On the other hand, two (the Great Pyramid and the Lighthouse of Alexandria) made it past the thousand-year mark... which is quite respectible. With most candidates for any list of Modern Wonders, once you rule out those already a millenium old, it would be astounding if any last another thousand years... depending on how you define a Wonder of the World.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I worked in the prison system in Massachusetts and I learned of a lot of corruption with the Big Dig from inmates. One inmate that refused to say which company he worked for, told me that they delivered every 12th load of concrete to an off-sight location where it was used in suburban projects. Also he mentioned that old slag concrete that had already started to set was mixed with new concrete and shipped off to the big dig site for pouring to save money and increase profits. Moral of the story: when you are dealing with vast amounts of public money you need considerable supervision and independant QA inspectors, auditors working along side the contractors.
two (the Great Pyramid and the Lighthouse of Alexandria) made it past the thousand-year mark
So did a third, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Built in about 350 BCE, it lasted for about 1600 years before being seriously damaged by earthquakes. (Complete history)
Did the epoxy joints, such a tiny but essential part of the Big Dig's engineering, originate in the plan that Gov. Michael Dukakis used to get the project approved and funded, or in the contracts that his successor, Gov. William Weld, awarded in Massachusetts?
--
make install -not war
The phrase "begs the question" does not mean "demands that we ask the question". Rather, "begging the question" is a type of logical fallacy. Modern usage clearly includes the first sense, but in my view this is an aberration which should be resisted; the correct sense of the phrase is too useful to lose without a fight.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
It's "asks" the question. Moron.
It seems to me that law is not sufficient to ensure that one has authority, any more than a law against speeding is sufficient to keep people from ever speeding.
The real failure isn't that this person died. The real failure is the costs and debts that have been placed on our sholders, and it is ongoing. No one has even aplologized for it yet, no one has even investigated yet, no one has been held accountable yet.
Who knows what other good things could have been done with that money, but no, it was siphoned off to corrupt contractors and corrupt bureauocrats who don't even deserve a food-kitchen plate from us, no less squander millions of our dollars. If people were actually entitled to the money they worked hard to earn - who knows what other good deeds they would have done with it. Perhaps they would have given more charity to children starving in India, or children dying of AIDS in Africa. Perhaps they would have put it towards their childrens college education, kids who would have then gotten careers and possibly found a cure for cancer. Sheesh, nobody even dares talk about the *REAL* death toll.
Today we live in a country that has more debt that they can ever pay off, and with total taxes ranging from 20% to 45% for every person, and paper money that has depreciated 95% over the last 95 years - and so nobody is able to be independent anymore. Nobody but the top 1% can pay out of pocket for their retirement anymore. Nobody but the top 1% can pay cash for their kids college any more. Nobody but the top 1% can buy their own house for cash any more. We are all dependent on a system that can only grow to hate us - that is the REAL failure, and REAL death toll has yet to kick in.
In fact, maybe people would just spend their money on beer. It doesn't matter, becaue even the act of taking peoples money (for good sounding deeds) is inherently evil. Today the US has more debt than it can ever pay off. Ever. There are three choices:
1) default = great depression
2) print up money to pay it off = hyperinflation
3) do both = stagflation
Any of the three options are going to destroy the lives of millions. So please, The REAL damage hasn't even scratched the surface.
While I'll agree M-W gives it as a definition, Wikipedia merely states that it has been is being used in this matter and even states that it is under debate as to whether or not it is a correct usage.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Blaming the city for picking the lowest bidder is wrong. The faults are with whichever licensing body allowed contractors who did not follow legal requirements to continue to work. Both the engineers who created this design and the inspectors who determined it was safe should have their licenses to work in MA withdrawn.
Without proper oversight, even the most expensive bidder may produce substandard and dangerous work.
all I have to say is MALIBU,CA is way more idiotic.
you pour your foundation on sand surrounded by sand/muddy/rocky mountains that have tons of dry brush that holds the rocks and dirt above you in place.
one good fire burns the once lush brush, therefore burning whats holding the place together and then you get ashy mud slides of houses and mud.
long story short.....
why are you going to repair your house there and complain that your house was distroyed.
its asking for it to be distroyed.
dont get me wrong it sucks.... i would hate to have my crap burn and muddied but thats how it goes if you make the choice to build here, people still do to this day.
its a beautiful area, but i wouldnt want to live there.
americans have the problem on not looking to the future but living in the now.
if you disagree, then why did bush cut education so many times, why is there no Social Security let alone social services, and why are we letting him take away our freedom.
why, because it doesnt affect/effect us now, 10-20 years we'll see his rath..... now i am just rambling.
You can't alter a design to withstand every possible scenario. Do you expect someone engineering a car to make it safe to drive at 120mph if the guy assembling it doesn't put any bolts on to hold the wheels in place?
b Inspection and testing are used to guarantee that things work to their specified safety margins. Most companies split QA into a different department to prevent expensive product failure in the field due to pressure from the design engineers. When very high reliability is required, some purchasers (such as the DoD at times) even opt for a separate agency to do testing in order to prevent corporate politics from pushing a substandard product out.
...in public schools.
Back in the 1980s the Supreme Court ruled that "secular humanism" is a "religion" and therefore cannot be taught in public schools. Humanism is the philosophical basis for ethics, so that explains a lot. Incorporate more than a sprinkle of ethical viewpoints in your curriculum, and get attacked by fundies.
Neither religious morals nor humanistic ethics are officially teachable here.
1. I don't live in Mass. I did, but haven't in 13 years.
2. The cleanup has absolutely started, but like the project itself it will take time. Maybe more than it should, but that's the way it is. Sometimes, areas must be left to stand in place for up to a year before new construction can happen. When they build new over passes, have noticed they pile up the dirt and then do nothing for a long time? That's part of the project. The engineers haven't found any more cost effective way to compact that much soil. I don't know if that's what is going on in Mass, but it could be.
3. Massachusetts has excellent mass transit now. If you live in or even near the city, you don't need a car 99% of the time. Many people don't own them, but rent when they go out of town.
I'm sure you have the answers to all big city problems right there behind your keyboard, but the rest of the world just has to muddle through while you keep the secret.
Keyboards seem to be like Tequilla. They make little men feel big, and big men look small.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
It suprising how skilled some groups of people are without any training. I mean, individuals with inherent skill crop up everywhere, but groups, not so much. I read about how people who grew up on military bases often have an unusual penchant for engineering, because as children they tended to get themselves underfoot in places where vehicles and machines were repaired. They could screw around with parts, figure how things went together, and construct strange godless machines that crossed lines man was not meant to cross. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that farm kids had a knack for electrical and mechanical work, and I'll bet more than a few take to chemistry pretty fast -- farming is remarkably chemistry-based. The biology side of farming is a no-brainer of course. Another surprising one? The children of clergy -- many church groups got into networking quite early, using BBSes and early list servers to get information around. Plus, nearly every church minister has to be a part-time desktop publisher to make all of the church's bulletains and whatnot, so clergyman had computers before a lot of people. So you can find church-brats that developed unusual aptitudes for computer technology.
For what it's worth, it really isn't one of Engineerings' biggest mistakes, it is one of Politics' biggest infrastructure mistakes.
The central artery was originally supposed to be I-95, not I-93, and there was supposed to be a bypass around the city - much like you find around many other large cities. Instead, what they did was merge I-95 and 128 together around the whole Greater Boston area (e.g., Boston + outlying suburbs) and renamed the central artery I-93. The big dig should have created a bypass, replacing the original short tunnel with a longer tunnel under the whole city, exiting north of the city, without any exits in the city, and the elevated highway could have remained and provided not only easy ingress and egress traffic, but a bypass underground, This would have resolved the daily traffice jams once and for all, as well as provided an economic boost to the area (not that it's needed, it'd have been a nice plus). The originally-intended bypass could have been achieved, and with not having to tunnel all the on and off ramps, the integrity of the tunnel could have increased while at the same time decreasing the costs.
Now what you have is a very dangerous highway with significant cross-traffic (with people zipping over at the last possible instant to catch their exits) stuck underground and difficult for emergency crews to get to, built very poorly due to political influences and budget constraints (e.g., execs not willing to accept a slimmer profit margin). It did not really resolve any traffic issues that were promised would be eliminated, and resulted in major disruptions in commerce and the daily lives of city dwellers throughout the construction, not to mention rendered every map useless because so many streets were affected and re-routed as a result of the project. It made merging onto the highway more difficult due in part to visibility issues and do in large part to the lack of courtesy on the part of drivers, most of whose driving tests consisted of a 1-mile drive around a city or suburban block "driving test" during low-traffic hours, drivers who REFUSE to adjust their driving habits to the dangerous confined situation which exists with scores of people merging onto and off of the tunnel at any given moment, each person jockeying for position without the slightest care or regard for anyone else's safety or convenience.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I think that the model to follow is the Chinese one, where corrupt government officials are quickly and efficiently dropped in prison, executed, and their organs distributed to transplant victims in timely fashion.
It was a series of engineering mistakes (which were affected by larger business concerns but remain engineering mistakes).
The initial design was structurally sound but unbuildable (it called for single steel rods supporting both walkways with a nut threaded 10meters or so onto the rod to support the upper walkway).
It was revised at construction time into a structually unsound but easy to build design.
A PE signed off on the revision, it was his failure, he could have said no. It was not a schedule or budget breaker.
BTW project managers might sign off on revisions but unless they are structural engineers they are'nt the only ones signing off. Structual engineers sign and stamp. That is where the buck always stops.
Engineering is the union of science, business and art. If the engineer does'nt have the ovaries/balls to say no to a bad technical call because of business reasons (s)he sould'nt hold a PE license. The fact it takes years to qualify just to take the PE test prevents stupid 22 year old recent college grads from being used as signers by unscrupulous businessmen.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
To "beg the question" means something very specific and something very different than as used in "Design News discusses Boston's Big Dig and begs the question - is it one of engineering's greatest failures?" I know this is off-topic but it's one of my pet peeves and surely /. types know better.
Read this and be wiser:
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=begging+the+ question/
The big dig, a failure? That barely counts as a failure. Try this: the Canadian Gun Registry, estimated to cost about $100 million dollars, ended up costing BILLIONs of dollars (and Canada doesn't exactly have billions of dollars to waste), it's had to be mostly scrapped, and it accomplished basically nothing because it ignored the fact that Canadians don't particularly want to register their guns, and there's no real way to force them short of searching 27 million people's homes.
Global Thermonuclear War. (From 'A Boy and His Dog').
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The correct 3 choices are fast, good or cheap. I don't know where you pulled easy out of. If it was easy they would need the engineer in the first place. A comp sci would do.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No. No it does not.
"Begging the question" is the term for a logical fallacy in which one assumes the truth of the conclusion in one of the premises. The example from Wikipedia is "Only an untrustworthy person would run for office. The fact that politicians are untrustworthy is proof of this."
Acceptable phrases are "prompts the question" or "raises the question". I hate it when we lose useful specific technical phrases to incorrect common usage. Sorry to rant, but with school still out for the summer I haven't had as much chance to play grammar nazi lately....
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
The more the engineer attempts to account for such things, the worse the actual implementation will get, as the contractors in question do even more shoddy, substandard work in order to make as much money as possible at the expense of the customer. After all, it's already accounted for in the design, right?
I can vouch for the fact that this is how most construction workers think.
While there are a few decent and capable tradesmen that manage to keep things working, the sad fact is that no matter what you do, the other workers and managers will manage to fuck things up.
The average contractor and the average construction worker do not care if they do the job right, they do not care if their negligence leads to injuries, and they are too stupid to recognise long-term dangers (and often, short-term dangers too). They only care if their work is good enough to last through warranty (and not even that if they can blame any problems on someone else), that they get paid, and that they don't have to work very hard. A failure past the warranty period just means repeat business.
Of course, while the specifics may differ, the general attitude remains the same in all industries, including government.
I live in Massachusetts. I worked in several architectural and engineering firms in Boston while Big Dig construction was in it's heyday. One of those firms was involved in some of the early design work. I spent many a lunch hour sitting on the edge a big hole in the ground watching the massive construction.
Here's my perspective. A project as large as the Big Dig is bound to be plagued by a degree of incompetence and corruption. Given the massive scale of the project, the actual degree of such malfeasance was negligible. Pretty much every politician, engineer, and contractor in Boston was involved with this project to one degree or another, and they are not all incompetant crooks. That might make for for lively barstool conversation, but anyone who says such things is demonstrably disconnected and ignorant of how this project really worked.
This project has been controversial from the get-go, and not without reason. It was massively expensive, and cost far more than originally anticipated. The money for this project came largely from out-of-state taxpayers who will never see any benefit, assuming there is a benefit at all. While it is all well and good to experience the new downtown Boston without the overhead artery; the fact of the matter is that the overhead highway that got pushed underground was augmented by a whole new above ground interchange system just a few miles to the south. In other words, a bunch of highway got pushed down into the ground in one place, and a bunch of new highway pushed up right next door. So while downtown Boston has a nice new parkway, South Boston is now blighted in the same way. How stupid is that?
This was a bad design from day one. But the project was a financial windfall for Massachusetts. It was launched an propelled by greed, not good design.
With respect to the recent mishap in the airport tunnel, the problem again is a design problem. And again, politicians are latching onto the issue for their own benefit, regardless of the consequences. Any politician worth their salt would stop playing this to their own personal advantage (e.g. Romney playing tough to bolster his prospects in his forthcoming presidential bid). Instead, they should point the blame squarely where it belongs: bad design. The tunnel walls did not collapse, a ceiling panel fell down. A three ton concrete ceiling panel. Tell me this: why in the hell would you suspend three ton concrete slabs above a highway filled with little tin cans on wheels?! The problem here has nothing to do with the proper application of epoxy or corruption on Beacon Hill. This is just flat out stupid design. Every licensed designer and engineer who had anything to do with the creation or approval of this travesty should have their license to practice revoked. At the very least. And every overhead concrete panel should be removed forthwith, and replaced by a sensible lightweight skin like alucobond.
Mitt Romney is blaming managers. Managers are blaming contractors. Contractors are blaming corruption. And the designers of this boondogle are sitting very quiet hoping no-one will notice them. I've never in my life witnessed such a morass of misplaced frustration. Mitt himself provides the perfect example of the faults he finds in others. He is a manager who doesn't know how to manage. He blames his political rivals to boost his own political prospects, instead of doing everything in his power to actually solve the problem. He can't do that of course, because he apparently can't figure out what the problem actually is. Like the parent poster says, it's not just one dumb engineer at fault - there's a whole gravy train of incompetance involved.
"Yeah, popularity is a great guide to correctness (*windows vs linux*). "
Do your parents realize they've raised one of the most stupid people on Earth? You should do them a favor and detonate some TNT strapped to your chest.
Sure, blame the engineers for political corruption. Why not?
-Rich
Sure you do, all the time. Look at the aerospace industry where the failure of a single faulty weld could lead to the deaths of hundreds of people. Same thing with bridges, tunnels, etc. It would be nice if we never had other peoples lives in our hands when making design decisions but that's just the way it is.
It may be true in aerospace, but it is not, or should not be true in civil engineering.
In aerospace, if your manufacturing something, it is a repeatable process, subject to testing and inspection. When it's not, you're talking about the Space Shuttle -- a job for test pilots, not civilians.
It is true that sometimes civil engineering designs have single points of failure that result in fatalities. But where you have a choice, it's better not to. For example, expansion joints were responsible for the bay bridge collapse in the Loma Prieta quake. But current design practices avoid them; it turns out they just aren't necessary. If they hadn't been used, the section of bridge would not have collapsed, killing one person.
Construction workers expected to work in uncomfortable and dirty environments and still do good work? Yea you're right, that is just unheard of (sarcasm). Drive around some construction sites when it's 100 degrees out and look at the work some of those guys are doing and the conditions under which they are doing it. Then tell me it was somehow a mistake to have construction workers on the Big Dig working in an "uncomfortable and dirty environment".
I know you want to rant about construction workers, but if you stop for a second, you'd realize what I'm saying isn't that construction workers should be allowed to do shoddy work. What I'm saying is that good design should assume that shoddy work will be done a certain fraction of the time. Sometimes you can't, in which case you'd better make (a) sure it is possible to inspect the work and (b) that the inspection is done. Clearly one or the other wasn't true in this case.
Factor of safety is completely the wrong way to think about it. The infamous pedestrian walkway collapse in the Kansas City Hyatt was caused by a steel contractor substituting a two hanging rods for a single rod supporting two levels. They wanted to avoid having a long threaded section, which might be damaged and create installation problems. However this change meant that the entire weight of structure was being borne by the upper join, not 50%. So if they were shooting for a 4x factory of safety, they really only had 2x. And with 2000 people crowding on the walkway to observe a dance below, it was supporting far more more weight that anybody thought it would need to bear. The result: the walkways collapsed, killing 114 and injuring an additional 200.
The lesson here is that your safety factor calculations can be rendered completely worthless by some small detail.
In this case: if the bolt to rock joint is 4x as strong as it "needs to be", it doesn't help at all when the bolt is improperly installed, because instead of being bonded to solid rock, it could be bonded to compacted dust particles lining the hole instead of the rock. You could have used a design that was rated at 1000x the required strength and it wouldn't matter at all, because the friggen bolt is expoxied to compacted dust, not rock.
I have a friend who worked on parts of the project. He'd look at a girder, and say, it needs to be ten inches, so let's make it a foot. Then the design would pass through several hands, each adding a bit of safety to it, and before you know it you have a 36" girder where a 10" girder would do. This kind of thing does nothing for safety; in fact, by draining resources from the project, it undermines safety, which would have been better served by spending the money elsewhere.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just because it won't fix the problem forever doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. The explosion in bandwidth available to consumers has spurred development of a whole group of technologies (P2P, iTunes, Slingbox) that would not be possible otherwise. This, in turn, creates a greater demand for bandwidth, which creates opportunities for technologies requiring even more bandwidth, which in turn creates a greater demand...you get the idea.
It's all about staying ahead of the demand curve. The entire US transportation system is analogous to an ISP that constantly runs behind consumers' bandwidth demands, turning net connections to sludge (want to experience this? Go to countries like South Africa. The net is so slow it's almost unusable at peak hours, even at universities). Then imagine you have a group of people arguing that since more bandwidth leads to more demand leads to more bandwidth requirements, it's useless to upgrade the networks.
Just stay ahead of the demand curve. Why can't we do this in the US? Clearly, the process by which we plan and build transportation infrastructure has become so bloated and expensive, and there are so many levels of bureaucracy and politics involved, either nothing gets done, or by the time it gets done there's already a need for 1 or 2 more improvements. Until this changes, we'll continue running behind the demand.
Yeah, I told them you were retarded, but they felt sorry for you.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This will surely get me labelled as a grammar nazi, but for the love of God don't use "begs the question" as a substitute for "raises the question"! Begs the question means something completely different. There are many good substitutes for the phrase "raises the question", but there are few substitutes for "begs the question"... using it incorrectly needlessly narrows the conceptual lexicon.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
The Big Dig is a first-of-its-kind engineering challenge. As such, at this point, only people who have some degree of experience with the actual project could be qualified to have an opinion.
Bechtel, as you would imagine, has major political ties worldwide. They also managed to get the contract to specify that their liability limit is quite low on this job.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
On behalf of everyone in the US who doesn't live in Boston, your amazing, proud, pretty 15 billion dollar debacle can kiss my taxpaying ass.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It didn't. It just took this long to kill someone. There were similar, though less deadly, and therefore less publicized, failures almost from day one.
Hey, Hairy Vagina, STFU!! Dassa way a nigga be talkin'. You gots a prob'm wiff dat, yo? Don' be a hatin' muthafucka, now. Howaboutsa word "anyways"? Ain' it spose a be "anyway"? But all y'all muthafuckas wants ta speaks, like, wrong. So dey puts it inna dictionary, and says it be correct.
Anyways, dis nigga gone!!
I don't know, some huge billions? Wonder how many electric scooters you could have gotten for the same amount of cash...tell people, agree to use these to commute, state taxes waived, free parking, and the scooter is free as in beer.
might have worked just as well...
well, in that case epicentre must mean dead centre, and 'internet' (aka the tubes) must mean an email. come on - technical language has a place, and there is a world of difference between raising and begging questions.
Looks like Design News not only updated this story, but created a microsite on the Big Dig for even further discussion. Check it out - http://www.designnews.com/article/CA6361529.html