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If you think that this is impossible today, you’re...
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You’ve probably heard about a space ship hitting badly Venus or Mars, I don’t remember, because of miscalculations, right? Well, that’s everywhere. When you do your taxes, when you calculate your retirement or when you receive an inheritance. All are miscalculation errors. In construction, there are everywhere. In 1970, during the construction of the Kadena Air Base Bridge in Okinawa, Japan, engineers made a slight miscalculation. As usual… Two teams started building from opposite sides of the river, expecting to meet perfectly in the middle. But when they finally got close... one side was 2 meters higher than the other! I mean… not 1 cm, not 2 cm, not 10 cm… just 2 meters. The error? One team had used metric measurements, while the other worked in imperial units. If you think that this is impossible today, you’re absolutely wrong. If you don’t believe me, check this list of lessons learnt from my last project. ​
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Vicente Valencia
I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Mega-projects don’t just overrun. They overrun lives. Ask South Africa. Medupi and Kusile were supposed to be the big solution. Two giant coal plants. Massive capex. Enough power to stop load-shedding and unlock growth. On paper? Glorious. In reality? A masterclass in how to blow up trust. Design issues. Rework. Delays measured in years, not months. Costs ballooning into the tens of billions of rand. Every extra year of delay? More load-shedding. More diesel. More businesses dying quietly....
Most governments treat their main airport like a toy.A prestige project.A political trophy.A place to cut ribbons and hire cousins. The perfect picture for LinkedIn. Egos don't get a better chance to shine. Bogotá did that for years.And the result was the "before" picture. Congested terminal.Old infrastructure.Chaos on peak days.And zero money to fix it properly. Then in 2007 they did something different.They gave El Dorado to people who actually had skin in the game... Crazy! A...
Most PPP programs don’t get into trouble because of corruption.Or bad engineers.Or lazy civil servants. Or big-mouthful politicians. They fail because people think risk is a philosophy. Not a number. And this has been a constant in my last PPP project in NZ. Everyone talked about risk. This is too risky, they said... but without numbers. You see... we ended with the highway operator not changing barriers because it was too risky... Anyway... another country that learnt about risk the hard way...