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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
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.
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.
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.
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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