|
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. ​ ​ |
I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
The Channel Tunnel. 50-km underwater megastructure linking France and the UK. An engineering icon. A masterpiece. A miracle of geology, finance, diplomacy, and caffeine or theine. A day like today in 1998. New Year’s Day. Half the team hungover. Half asleep. Half the world still partying. The temperature suddenly dropped. Outside: freezing. Inside the service tunnels: warm and humid. A perfect recipe for the gods of engineering to say: “Let’s mess with them.” Condensation froze. Ice formed on...
If you thought that I’ll be telling you happy new year stuff, you don’t know me enough. Once that you over drink and over eat tonight, you have one year ahead. To grow. To become better. To achieve great things. Up to you, what you want to do tomorrow. When there are some people messing around with “resaca” or a “hangover”, others will be running. Vicente Valencia Academy 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....
Brisbane, Australia. 2011. A hot, humid year, and an even hotter PPP disaster: the Clem7 Tunnel. Traffic numbers tanked. Revenue collapsed. The SPV went into voluntary administration. And the government, tired, embarrassed, politically cornered… decided to move fast. Maybe too fast. “Take control. Sort the mess. Do it now.” And they did. At light speed. They pushed what, in PPP terms, is basically the nuclear button: step-in, buy-out, asset recovery… messily… everything at once. OMG. The...