Infrastructure and AEC Possibilities "Fix It First"

President Obama announced in his State of the Union Address we should be focusing on fixing the broken infrastructure elements in our country. Not long after President Obama's address the civil engineers announced our county only earned a D+ in infrastructure condition and performance. While a lot of focus has been on the roads and bridges our water systems are in deplorable condition. Many cities have pipes which leak almost 20% of their input back into the ground at a tremendous cost to rate payers. Electrical grids and telecommunication networks are aging and in rural communities are often among the oldest installations left in our country.

Roads: Why Fix Them When You Can Build More?

Democrats would rather build more than fix much of anything. Building new cost x times more than to fix what is already there. 

 

Obama Details ‘Fix it First’ Plan

Cutting red tape, increasing private investment, and designating $40 billion for urgent repairs are the three cornerstones of President Obama's new plan for U.S. infrastructure.

Fleshing out the "Fix it First" plan announced Feb. 12 in the State of the Union Address, the White House issued a Fact Sheet on Wednesday (Feb. 20) with more details of the proposal.

"Investing in infrastructure not only makes our roads, bridges, and ports safer and allows our businesses and workers to be as competitive as they need to be in the global economy; it also creates thousands of good American jobs that cannot be outsourced," according to "The President’s Plan to Make America a Magnet for Jobs by Investing in Infrastructure."

Here's Barack Obama's Plan To Fix America's Crumbling Roads And Bridges

... What remains unclear, however, is how the Obama administration plans to pay for this and other infrastructure initiatives that the President outlined in his State of the Union speech last month.

In a speech to the National Governors Association Monday, the President fleshed out additional details of the plan, announcing that his administration will create "regional teams" that will assist states in implementing infrastructure projects.

Fact Sheet: The President’s Plan to Make America a Magnet for Jobs by Investing in Infrastructure

White House fact sheet on infrastructure projects. 

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Finally, what appears to be a 'shot in the arm' for the basic needs for the country is only a temporary fix to a systemic problem. Costs of federal procurement is higher than any other roadway and infrastructure project type of its kind. Lower real value is produced per dollar spent than in any other kind of construction. While welcome to the larger infrastructure design and construction firms, smaller firms will have to scratch it out to gather their part of the pie. And when the pittance of 40 Billion is spent when we are really talking about over 1 Trillion in needs, the short-term fix will leave us with significant needs to deal with.

Call and write your federal legislators in both the House and Senate to use this as a starting shot in the arm for real wage growth in the country. While you are at it introduce them to the idea of integrated design and delivery to help each dollar go further. 

Top Five Most Read Articles at this blog.

 Seems people over the past year were really interested in the lean topics but just as interesting three of the most popular articles came from pretty early on and all three were tied to BIM in some way. But one of my favorites about the Design Age is still there in the top five.

Feel free to chime in about your favorite. Oh, and if there's something you would like to hear about more let me know that too. 

And thanks to everyone for your readership and support. 

Andrew

Remember, "Collaboration is the glue of success."

Why Do Projects Fail? - A contrarian POV

Earlier today I came across an article entitled, "Why Do Projects Fail? - Learning how to avoid failure."  An engaging topic to be sure. Especially for me, since I'm in the business of helping folks deliver successful projects and managing the change which often accompanies those projects.

Well the article rounded up the usual suspects of project requirements, losing focus, disengagement, impossible deliverables, the wrong deliverables, the wrong project statement, governance and poor implementation. Now I'm not going to debate the importance of everyone of the stated reasons in the article, but I am going to take issue with the basic premise of a project' existence. The single item above which get's closest to this idea is the 'wrong project statement.'

Project Statements and Their Assumptions

We begin a project with the best intentions in place. Thinking that it will deliver clear benefits to it's constituent users and make their lives better. But hold on a minute. Who asked the question about why this idea came about in the first place. Why did they think this was a good idea? Who is the real champion behind this idea and why are they interested? What is the failure surrounding this project's initiation? What is the value of that Failure? Even more importantly, what causes the failure in the first place?

Did you catch on the Who, What When, Where, Why theme. As a long-time problem solver both in the singular and collaborative group context, often I've found few, if any, of the above questions or others similar have been asked and seriously answered. In many cases the key question is about the failure surrounding the genesis of the project in the beginning. More than once when looked at closely, this failure value question gets to the heart of where the real solution lies and more than likely, the solution wasn't what people thought it should be.

So the assumptions made at the beginning of projects are more likely to contribute to the failure of a project simply because the problem statement is all wrong from the beginning. It is of no consequence if there was complete engagement, perfect execution and implementation; in the end the project will fail to survive because it serves no real purpose of delivers any significant value and will be abandoned.

I mention this not from the perspective of building projects so much as the processes we use to deliver projects. Often our efforts to make our businesses more effective only continues to contribute to the confusion and failure within and between organizations. We find ourselves chasing rabbits, ghosts and digging holes for no reason. All the ineffectual, "Stupid" stuff many of us deal with daily.

The Challenge

So the next time someone proposes a project, find out if it can stand the scrutiny of the Who, What, When, Where and Why sisters. If it does, then likely you are on the right path and success is more likely than if you don't.


This is a continuing series of monographs and conversations about the Connections of ideas as Strings and Links of overlapping ideas dealing with project management, business management, business processes and project delivery.
Remember "Collaboration is the Glue of Success."

Rigidity in Institutions is harbinger of failure

My good friend James L. Salmon has a blog called Collaborative Construction I know some of you read, but for those of you who don't check out this link to his post entitled (SMART)X Public Policy? While the article James refers to is interesting and on point to the medical profession, it is also a shade of foreboding in the Built Environment as well. As more and more public policy is enacted in the areas of building performance, emissions from the built environment, water purity, water usage and the like, we continually restrict the creativity of human minds and calcify the momentum we need to maintain to make the huge changes needed to create environments which are both environmentally and economically sustainable.

While legislation to improve air quality has seen some success, there is also abuse on both sides and this results in further draconian reaction from regulators, legislators and litigators. Like Professor Mead, the author of the cited post, points out, we need to refocus our efforts on getting the bloat out of policy and legislation and focus on more responsive means. The AEC industry needs to take note, we are already heavily regulated in the areas of building design performance, labor, material safety and job safety. The business does not need to bear more regulation for the sake of trying to be more responsive to the needs of society.

As an industry, we need to be more productive, innovative and responsive and supportive business relationships with a goal in mind to shed our old thinking for new relationships and better performance negating the need for more legislation and administrative oversight. Responsible change is less expensive for everyone concerned.





This is s continuing series of ideas based on Connections and Links which form Strings of knowledge related to the Built Environment and the issues surrounding project delivery and regulatory compliance. 

Are EV owners buying their 2nd car? Research in Japan says ???

If the market research recently released about buyers in Japan is any indication, then manufacturers need to take a harder look. The all electric cars are suffering most in surveys asking "Would you purchase another electric vehicle?" Over 30% are saying a resounding "No." That's interesting news. Where Japan has much more adjacent locations and denser overall population than the US or even Europe it could be telling as to why these technologies are having a harder time with larger market adoption.
A McKinsey report just released cited an overall loss in satisfaction with their earlier choice.

These buyers said they were “seduced” by low energy costs, attractive subsidies, and a good test drive. But they were less well informed about EVs than were environmentally conscious “green enthusiasts” (who love EV technology for its low energy costs and comfortable driving experience) and became less enthusiastic about their purchase when they faced issues such as higher electric bills and locating places to charge their cars. 

If the US automakers are going to convince us that EV's are a sound choice they are going to have to have more education, better charging infrastructure and more support for the US driving public while reducing the cost of vehicles at the same time. I think the jury is still out on this transport solution. Look at the overall carbon and energy differential to make and operate these vehicles when most of that energy is still coming from high emission coal-fired plants, their very high use of heavy metals and difficult to recycle and their initial glamour of cheap driving costs is greatly, if not entirely offset, depending on whose research you believe.

Read the entire article at McKinsey

This article is a continuing post in the series of Connections and Strings ties to sustainability, environment, and changes in urban life. The electric, EV of the future will have to address many issues with the public like charging locations, initial cost and total carbon contribution over the life-cycle of the vehicle if it is to be a successful response to the lowering of emissions. 

The Employee Tracking Tag and Construction Sites

Recently the Wall Street Journal ran an article about a technology which has been around for a couple of years which tracks the location and tone of voice of the wearer and then correlates the locations w/ time to show the types of interactions between people. The premise of this technology is to discover social gathering and interaction modes of people in a specific space. (Read the article here on WSJ).

It got me to wondering if this kind of technology could have an impact on the efficiency on a construction or mining or oil production or any other construction related site. You see all the studies I've seen referenced for this kind of technology is in the office environment. The postulate would be if we haven't seen any real productivity in these types of environments over the past 40 years or so, then it might not be all technology and planning that is the problem, people and how they work together are likely part of the problem as well.

If you think you have a problem with this, you are probably aware all smartphones have GPS tracking features in them and anyone can track you if they know your number. Also there is an expending market to track vehicles, pets, mental and dementia patients, the criminal's ankle bracelet  and a host of other tracking methods being introduced which adds to the growing collection of Big Data which surrounds us every day.

I also include here the public sentiment on these devices being used from the WSJ poll as of this morning

Read the article and chime in with your thoughts and experiences.

A couple of links to the technology providers

• Sociometric Solutions
• Boston Global
• Using GPS for Tracking People
• Alliance Tech, Meeting and Exposition Tracking

This article is part of a continuing series of posts which look at emerging technologies, big data and efficiency in the work place. Specifically the Connections between unlikely events and technologies which create Strings of these Connections to reveal emerging patterns of our new economy.

4d Printing + BIM

Seems the folks at MIT are at it again. This time with Prof/ Skyler Tibbets working with mediums created on 3d printers, but which have the difference of being able to change their physical geometry when activated by an outside environmental change such as vibration, movement or presence of water for starters. It's been tagged as 4d printing. Seems the printing process is only the beginning of the process and depending on the engineering of the printed compound, change of state or organization is the intended outcome.

Some of these compounds change their shape from a simple linear form to more complex shapes. In some cases independent parts combine with others to form a new shape. All very intriguing. watch a couple of Vimeo vids [here].

Seems Prof Tibbets and Autodesk have an association to create authoring tools to help designers create these little gadgets. I find this interesting development, especially in the light of current professional conditions where designers have hard enough time designing railings and curtainwalls, now we are working on items they can design a dynamic changing artifact. Amazing, yet intriguing.

I hope some of you chime in with comments on where you think this will go.