Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
If you think that this is impossible today, you’re...
|
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.
PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Let me challenge you today. Being busy isn’t how you become world-class. It’s normally about quality. How Dan Sullivan used to say: “How you do anything is how you do everything. “ Sot, it is about quality, more than quantity. Quality in all things. The nutrition and food in your body. The quality of your sleep and environment. The quality of your recovery. The quality of your network. The quality of your training and mentors. So, let’s do a pause today this Sunday, and reflect about how to...
Talking to good friends in Ferrovial and health & safety, we end up comparing cultures. Comparing projects. And disasters… UK. In the 2000s. Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Budget: more than £4 billion Big… very big project, with lots of complexities and workers. Every engineer knows that… If something went wrong… it wouldn’t be small. So, they treated safety like a system… for real. Not a slogan. Daily briefings. Clear reporting lines. No ambiguity on responsibility. And… Anyone could stop the...
Canada. Mid-2010s. Milton–Madison Bridge Not a PPP, but a serious piece of infrastructure. Old steel truss bridge. Built in 1929. As an engineer… I love it. Around 13,000 vehicles per day. But… like all old bridges… It was structurally done. Fatigue. Corrosion. Narrow lanes. No shoulders. A bad accident waiting to happen. So they decided to replace it. Nothing new. But… they chose a method most people would avoid. Slide-In Bridge Construction or SIBC The idea is brilliant. Build the entire...