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...
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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
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
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...
I’m reviewing a project right now. A mess. Close to failure. Fixing situations like this… is my bread and butter. But the real question is not: “How do we get out of this sh*t?” It’s: “How did we end up here… again?” Because this is not random. Every country has it. Every sector repeats it. And no… it’s not because people are stupid. Governments hire smart people. Companies bring top talent. Advisors look impressive on paper. And still… Same problems. Same patterns. Same endings. So what’s...