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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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Behind my computer I have a painting from Egypt. And this makes me remember how those guys used to work. They built the Great Pyramid of Giza 4,500 years ago.2.3 million stone blocks.Each up to 80 tons.No AI. No BIM. No “collaboration workshops.” Probably a whip, but also vision, discipline, and a leader who didn’t run design sprints. He ordered them. While today we spend months deciding whether to use Slack or Teams, Sharepoint or ACONEX, those guys were aligning tens of thousands of workers...
I was talking yesterday to my real estate agent, and we arrived at the same conclusion. There are so many opportunities out there! Just a question of picking up the right one! But there are so many, that you don’t know what to choose. Exactly that happens in many fields these days. PPPs for example. Agencies launch a new project and they expect companies lining up for the bid. Then… they find the hard way that there is just silence in the room. Zero excitement. Too many projects and agencies...
Most projects fail for boring reasons.Not for lack of brains.Not for lack of money.For lack of aligned incentives. Boring, because they repeat over and over. We write 300 pages of clauses. Pay great sums to lawyers working with the best views and more expensive offices. Then we hope.And hope is not a control. You want performance?Make winning for them the same as winning for you.Make losing for them the same as losing for you. Simple. Brutal. Fair. In PPPs, I’ve seen both worlds. World A:...