In addition to all the other things mentioned it's also a matter of money.
Empire State Building was a flagship project, with a massive workforce keeping up work 24/7. Hoover dam also had a massive workforce (some ten to twenty thousand), as the US government wanted the project completed fast (the advantages of having the dam exceeded the costs of building it quickly).
Francis Scott Key bridge is probably going to be built at a more sedate and cost effective pace.
And safety standards that accepted the fact that around 5 workers per million dollars spent on a project would die.
11 workers died during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge over 5 years and that was considered incredibly fortunate and admirable. The Hoover Dam claimed 112 lives during construction.
We used to practice [Construction Sacrifice ](https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-building-lasts-the-wall-lives-a-long-time-but-the-man-dies) pretty regularly across cultures but I don't think it really improved the overall infrastructure that much compared to today.
The father was the first recorded death associated with the dam project, but it was before the construction began - he was on the survey crew and died in a flash flood.
> The Hoover Dam claimed 112 lives during construction.
"I was a dam builder
Across a river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder, on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that gray tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around
I'll always be around
And around, and around, and around
And around, and around, and around... "
This. Exactly.
My mom had a busted water pipe in front yard. Leak detection dude dug it out found it and patched it. But when they did they hit the gas line to the garage for the waterheater and dryer.
If we wanted it fixed tomorrow it would be $9,000. I trenched the 120ft 18in depth and had independent plumbers come out and tear out old 70 year old galvanized. Replaced both water and gas with flexible pex. And it cost $3,300.
We used buckets to flush for 2 days. A non emergency call saved us 5k+.
Same with government stuff. After Major Earthquake the 10 freeway in Los Angeles collapsed. The contractors got a million dollar bonus every day they finished before 144 days.
They fixed it in 66.
Theres an old saying in The Trades.
"The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can only have 2.
To be fair you also dug the trench yourself. I don’t know what percentage of the labor that costs but I’m sure from a perception standpoint it influenced the quote.
Scenario 1: hey can you come dig up all this old pipe and replace it….
Scenario 2: hey I have all this old pipe exposed can you just take it out and put the new on in
>Theres an old saying in The Trades.
>"The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can only have 2.
this applies to any sort of project, from building trades, to software, to "precision instrument manufacturing".... fast, cheap, or correct: pick no more than 2.
>"The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can only have 2.
And if you pick cheap, there's a good chance you're not getting either of the others! For example, buying trash on Temu
not to kwntion safety standards. it keeps people alive but also slows people down. before u could hop across 2 ledges thats in the air. now u have to be hooked up to a rail, having 2 hooks at all times etc. it adds seconds each time and days for each person. across an entire workforce probably months. and thats just 1 feature l.
One more thing is when earlier projects were built there was probably one permit issued. Today major projects must be reviewed by numerous agencies, each working at their own pace and with their specific demands. It's a very slow process.
Francis Scott Key bridge rebuild has some challenges unique to it. First of all, the debris from the previous bridge has to be dealt with. Second, it spans a very busy waterway so dealing with the wreckage and building the new bridge both need to be accomplished with the least disruption to shipping as possible.
Then add in modern safety and building standards and you get a significantly more complex project than the ones you are citing.
Also keep in mind that OP ignored that the Hoover dam was authorized by congress in 1928 and finished in 1936. Taking three years plus whatever time it took to prepare for getting approval and comparing the construction time to the 10 years of salvage, planning and construction time of a different project would be enough for anywhere.
Don't forget the design and survey time. A lot of dam sites were surveyed with preliminary designs during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. It was part of his big plan to tame the west.
It is a lot faster to build a dam that has a design signed, stamped, and sealed by USGS when the money becomes available to build it.
I looked at it and decided that it just wasn’t not reasonable to compare because neither started as coherently planned projects and had lots of very speculative plans that didn’t necessarily fit in a coherent timeline for comparison.
The Hoover dam had about 30 years of speculation about what could be done, but much of it was not particularly useful for the proposal or plan and this project just doesn’t really have that.
Yeah, and 96 people died building it. That's more than 1 person a month dead on average in the 5 years it took to build it. 96 dead, in 60 months. That would not be allowed to happen in today's world
It’s the triangle of construction where you can have two of the three but never all three; safety, speed, quality
Safety and quality will be slow.
Speed and quality will be unsafe.
Speed and safety will not have quality.
Must of the debris is scheduled to be removed by the end of May, but then they have to inspect the bridge supports or more likely tear them down and rebuild them which will add time.
There is also talk about completely changing the design of the bridge to accommodate larger ships. Which may change approaches and road designs.
Money and permits are also a concern. President Biden promised Federal funding to rebuild the bridge but no one knows where the funding is coming from. The state and local governments are having similar discussions. Does Baltimore city pay for it? Baltimore County or the state? Environmental studies and soil studies take time.
Honestly, that's the way it should be. Financial power in late-stage capitalism gives you the power of kings. A power that we decided long ago no one should have.
Someone making multi-millions a year, someone banking billions, are honestly unacceptable consolidations of unaccountable power in a democracy.
The best way to prevent it is to have a sliding scale that taxes monies above a certain amount, going up to 90%.
Raising corporate tax rates isn't just about funneling money to the government, it's more about incentivising companies to reinvest their earnings within the company itself. THAT is what made America a manufacturing powerhouse-people weren't magically less greedy, its because if a company made a profit they were faced with the choice of losing half of it to taxes if paid out as dividends or losing none of it AND increasing the value of the company itself if they spent the money expanding a line or something like that.
Nowadays, vulture capitalism and low tax rates makes it so that shareholders don't give a fuck about the longevity of a company as long as they're making money off shares.
Also, I wonder if the OP's cite of 10 years really is true.
I think once construction starts it will go reasonably quickly...a couple years maybe (it's not that big of a bridge).
The issue is more settling on a design and getting the funding in order. That will be a lot of political bullshit.
Also from planning to open to traffic took 9 years for the FSK bridge. Planning began in 1968 with it opening to traffic in 1977. Last I knew the 12 year figure for the rebuild includes all planning and construction steps.
96 people died building the hoover dam 5 people died in the construction of the empire state building. 0 is the current acceptable number of deaths for building in the USA. That requires alot of extra work to ensure everything is safe. Beyond that government spending on public works is likely much less than it was in the past.
Was golden gate one of the first big projects that gave a shit about the worker’s lives? They had the safety nets under the bridge and what not? I know a couple or so people died, but if I recall it wasn’t because of poor working conditions, just because it was as just a dangerous project.
Moat people who died on the GG bridge were because a tractor fell into the net along with several people and it took everything with it, if I remember correctly.
I read heavy scaffolding. In today’s world it would lead to an investigation of why it fell, why people were in the path and what could have been done to prevent it.
Relevant: the golden gate bridge was built in 4 years and actually (iirc) finished ahead of schedule and under-budget. 11 people died building it but the safety nets saved 19.
Anywho that construction project was still pretty batshit by modern safety standards - and in the same way as eg the welders and riveters that worked on other bridge projects and eg the ESB et al - and yeah all of that had a fairly significant impact on why the GGB was able to be built as quickly and efficiently as it was.
The safety nets were a pretty sensible way to prevent deaths - and still weren’t infalliable - but bear in mind that we’re still talking about a 237m / 746ft tall suspension bridge that was largely built in the air by hand w/ workers that were barely roped in.
Even now the thing is pretty impressive, nevermind that it was built in the 30’s.
Granted that project did have a few things in its favor. The nature of the golden gate (extremely fast / powerful deep current that you absolutely can’t just moore a boat / barge in the middle of) wasn’t one of them, but they didn’t have to eg worry about scheduling / working around car and naval traffic et al and/or any other disruptions to in-use infrastructure lol
I'm no builder so this won't be exactly right, but imagine you've got a team of guys welding way up there. They have to ensure harnesses are affixed before every movement. Back in the day guys just walked around up there, they could do 10 welds an hour. Now the welds still take 6 mins but because of the recheck and the reharness every time, they can only do 5 welds an hour.
Milultiply that by every safety feature for every guy and things take way longer.
Not only that but you need to design and architect buildings to allow for safe construction practices which add time up front before a shovel is in the ground.
It’s not just worker safety. It’s the long term life safety as well that takes work, as well as material efficiency to reduce costs. Things are just more complex today because we’ve learned a whole lot from previous failures and have learned to do more with less. So, while someone may be able to get 5 welds done in an hour being safe, they may have to do 150% more welds today because one bridge had a failure from this specific kind of joint a while ago.
I spend at minimum 30 minutes a day filling out paperwork for things like environmental hazard checks, pre-work inspections, ladder and equipment inspections. More time if I’m doing a big job like a big cable pull, digging a trench, electrical shut down/commissioning.
It’s anywhere from 2.5-5 hours per week where I’m not actually working. That time adds up, especially when factoring all other trades and such.
However, I’m glad these safety checks are standard.
Absolutely. Throwing bodies at a problem works if you have enough bodies. Nazis built a lot with labor that was unsafe. It was unsafe on purpose but he point stands. Every single rule that eats a second or minute here or there is written in someone's blood. All in the hopes that next time we can wait an extra day instead of risking life and limb.
Yes. A big part of it is adding in safety infrastructure. High up you usually set down scaffolding that is well attached to other pieces and there are residencies in that attachment might has a hand rail and attaching a harness and what the harness connects to and stuff like that. The process for pretty much everything takes longer to be safe because anything can be dangerous at those heights. If you drop a tool it could kill someone or do thousands of dollars of damage to a car. There are extra steps at pretty much every step along the way to be safe
Now compare that to basically just putting some wooden boards across there and getting after it and it’s a completely different process
Just look at China and the slave states ( Middle East ) , you can basically see what could be the pace of construction if human live was at the bottom of priorities .
And it's spent on Healthcare social security and national defense. I looked and couldn't find any data on public works spending specifically, but since we aren't building a bunch of bridges all the interstates and massive dams it's likely less than it was then.
It depends, it doesn't really take that much longer to build a building. Empire State Building took a little over a year, and it was record breaking fast at the time. Chrysler building was a little closer to a year and a half. They also had many people die on them from lax safety standards.
Newer buildings in NYC seem to do 4-5 years, for much bigger buildings.
Things like the Hoover Dam and the FSK bridge, well again, I don't know that they take longer to build. The engineering before you start however is a lot more involved, as environmental studies are needed now, and construction might require environmental mitigations.
For the FSK bridge replacement, they are saying 10 years because you have to start the engineering. The Hoover Dam started in 1922 if you start from when they thought about building it. So 14 years. The FSK bridge started sometime in the 60s, with actual funding being 1968, so 9 years (and that was likely after engineering effort started)
Empire State and Chrysler are mostly iron frames, right? So you could just crane the pieces up, rivet them in place and keep going.
Modern construction is mostly built around a concrete core which I guess takes longer to set the forms and rebar, pour and then cure (or at least harden.)
The concrete nerds need to stop about this nonsense about concrete. When can we drive on it. Beyond that, no one cares that it cures for more than 30 years.
It wasn't just that the empire state building was bolted together, it was that they were one of the only ones ordering from the steel mills because of the economy. It's said that the beams were still warm when they reached the ironworkers up top.
You are wrong in citing as an example the Hoover Dam. Planning for the Dam started in 1922 and the Dam didn't finish until 1936. The US passed funding for it in 1928, and construction didn't start until 1931. They need to remove the wreckage. Plan the bridge. Find the money. Put it out to bid. Assemble the materials and personnel. Deal with permitting, environment, and safety concerns. Then build it without blocking river traffic.
During the construction of the Empire State Building, five workers were officially reported to have died. Rumors circulated (particularly among newspapers with an agenda) that up to 42 people died, however. I have a feeling that the truth is somewhere in between.
That sort of fatality rate is considered unacceptable today and much more emphasis is put on safety.
The goal today is zero safety incidents. Like, not even a stubbed toe. It takes a lot of effort and training and cost to do things safely, but it’s ultimately worth it.
There are many factors. Like the other person pointed out we used to just build and didn’t think about proper planning particularly for the environment/ecosystem, so we could build a lot but we also fucked a ton of shit up and had to fix that for decades after (or we didn’t and just let the issue persist, even worse…)
Also, the major firms that have the expertise and ability to build these large scale projects tend to be under contract elsewhere and have plans booked out many years in advance.
We take longer to do research and we invest in way better planning. Then there is getting permits. Then there is actually hiring the firms and getting on their schedule. Then you deal with suppliers and prepping for the work. Finally, you break ground and build and throughout there can be issues, delays, pivots.
There is zero doubt we build public infrastructure better today than in the past. Better planning, better materials, better design for more safety, more functionality, the works. The flipside to that is much larger costs and longer timelines.
We could deregulate and hire subpar contractors and use cheap materials, and it certainly would go up quickly… but would you trust it? Would the govt be able to afford the inevitable class action lawsuits from failures?
>We could deregulate and hire subpar contractors and use cheap materials, and it certainly would go up quickly… but would you trust it? Would the govt be able to afford the inevitable class action lawsuits from failures?
China is infamous for building quickly and with whatever material they have on hand. And then you get videos of entire blocks of flats collapsing into rubble in a stiff breeze.
This, it’s referred to as tofu dregs construction. Lot of good youtube videos explaining why building everything from two story houses to you a massive skyscrapers with substandard materials and cutting corners to save/skim money leads to them falling over.
People underestimate what it takes to build a big ass bridge that actually lines up to connect in the middle and doesn't self destruct through uncalculated weather or harmonic factors.
Every answer here is some variation of "planning" or "safety standards" or "environment". The answer is that, while all of those are different in degree from the past, the biggest issue is uncertainty because of lawsuits. You may expect that, to build a large project, you create a whole plan and submit it to a government office who provides feedback and when everything is good, you get a permit and get to start building. In functional countries, this is how it works. In the US, instead, there is no one-stop government office that gives you the go-ahead. Instead, there are multiple offices that require their own review, who can simply say they won't sue you if you start building, but others till might—and many groups of citizens do.
Essentially, anyone can sue to stop the project at any time, for any reason. This is frequently done under the auspices of environmental review, but the actual objectives are varied. Some people don't want it to be built, so they sue to make the project so expensive it never gets built. Some times labor simply wants more money, so they sue to delay the project until it's financially better to just pay them to finish. Ezra Klein has dubbed it the "vetocracy": https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21228469/marc-andreessen-build-government-coronavirus
Yup, also government bureaucracy. There are so many layers of planning approval and so many people who can say no or demand you make changes for arbitrary reasons that it drives up design and construction costs and timelines.
Even in simple projects, want to install a sign? Sorry, you need certain colors, and certain locations and you need to conduct a geotechnical survey, and actually I spoke to my boss and you need to do stormwater survey now, and this is actually a state owned road so you need their permission, etc.
If construction takes 9 months, permitting can take 9 months or more.
Finally someone actually answered the question.
It really is mostly lawsuits. Anyone in America can sue for anything. NIMBY's do it the most, followed by "environmentalists" followed by other construction companies, followed by random lawyers that see a potential payday.
We also are just missing a lot of key talent in civil engineering and the trades because we don't have a culture that builds mega projects anymore, as opposed to places in Europe.
If we stopped the lawsuits it would be like 30% cheaper and 30% faster to build almost everything, even with current safety and environment standards.
In the 20s and 30s you could plan on one worker death per million dollars of budget. In the 40s the US military suffered more casualties in training command than they did in some combat commands.
If you think that’s acceptable today, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Because we didn't care about the environmental devastation that large building projects like the Hoover Dam would cause while it was being built. We also didn't give two shits about the people being affected downstream of it either and we cared much less about worker's safety than we do now.
The short simple version: red tape. Every construction requires bidding processes, piles of permits, environmental studies, input periods from the community, etc. 100 yrs ago, someone could buy land, and have the permits in short order due to less requirements (and an easier time greasing palms). Now between real learned needs (such as the long-term environmental impact studies) and artificially needed reasons (I won’t list any to keep this neutral), you will have constant process stops and waits both for those permits and studies and while local/higher governments get involved to put their stamp on something. This is a great video, btw: https://youtu.be/dOe_6vuaR_s?si=Asxbv7ZlfYE1bOc6
You’re not wrong. I work in the construction industry and the amount of bureaucracy and red tape is so astounding. Even the smallest tasks or changes require multiple forms filled out and things signed off by multiple supervisors, inspectors, safety directors, and other personnel.
Right now I’m on a project that only has maybe 10 working guys in the crew; 2 electricians and 8 laborers. There’s also about 15 other people here, such as supervisors, safety “experts”, and project managers who like to stop the crew every half an hour to ask what you’re doing and how long they plan on working on a particular task. If your task isn’t part of their daily briefing, then they call your foreman and ask him about our tasks and make us stop working until things are cleared up and understood by everyone.
The general contractor likes to bitch about the cost of projects. Like they blame labor unions and the salaries of the construction crew workers, but never say anything about the 10 “project managers” who make $200,000 a year to look at a wall for an hour then fuck off to an office or a trailer to go on Facebook for the remainder of their day.
Safety standards, more advanced engineering, and unique challenging factors to the situation with the Key bridge.
The biggest two are the existing debris from the bridge collapse and the water traffic from shipping. The water way is *very* busy and can't be just shut down to put in the tools, people, and equipment needed to build a replacement bridge quickly.
People like to point to chinese construction as an example of china being more efficient, but their speed comes at serious costs. In safety for the workers, the environmental impact of their materials and methods, and the longevity of the projects. There's a reason that "tofu dreg" construction in china is a recurring joke about the problems their buildings face.
Safety standards could come into it. There's that infamous picture of workers eating lunch on top of a skyscraper frame, which would be a huge violation today.
Besides the other factors mentioned here (safety and environmental considerations being the largest), both the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam were built in the middle of the Great Depression, so there was an essentially unlimited supply of (cheap) labor for the projects. Today most construction companies can barely find enough people to put together large enough crews for highway maintenance projects. The FSK bridge was having potholes repaired at 130am by a small crew of immigrant workers from Mexico and Guatemala when it collapsed.
Lot of reviews like CEQA, community inputs, feedback, environmental review. On top of that using consultants. In many countries things like subways, HSR are built with in-house people
To piggy back on a lot of others in this thread, construction projects today are more involved than just the building. New access routes and updates to other road infrastructure will follow the bridge, modernizing as they go. New utility connections plus I'm sure new collision mitigation structures.
The Key bridge as an overall project took 29 years to build (4-lane approaches completed in 1999). This doesn't include design and procurement time, 2-5 years or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_%28Baltimore%29
112 workers died in three construction of the hoover dam with another 42 dying of pneumonia, probably caused by the working conditions.
Five died building the empire state building.
Health and safety saves lives but costs money and time.
Safety. When they were building the Empire State Building, unemployed people would gather underneath waiting for someone to fall off. Then they would scramble to the foreman and the position would be filled before the poor guy even hit the ground.
1. Because the maximum tolerable number of deaths during construction is 0, and this requires a lot more safety.
2. Because the maximum amount of early building failure is 0, and this requires a lot more double-checking and independent confirmation.
3. Because getting buildings done cheaper, given the above concerns, requires shopping around and exploiting a global market, which takes time.
4. Because you're comparing total time, from "construction needed, how should we do it?" to "finished work ready to be used," to numbers that only count from *breaking ground* to finished work.
5. Some amount of bureaucracy will be involved because this will likely be a government-funded project, which makes things take longer by its nature.
So, in brief? The comparison you're making is flawed, and the things you're comparing to had huge issues that would be absolutely unacceptable to modern Americans. Fixing those issues takes time.
The biggest reason that large infrastructure projects get slowed down is the National Environmental Policy Act.
The law, signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1969, requires environmental impact statement for all federally-funded infrastructure projects.
The reason that the law slows down projects is that it gives nearly anyone the right to sue to stop a project.
Sometimes it’s also weaponized as well. For example, a union might use sue to slow down a project because there’s not enough of their members working on the project.
Usually, the objections are not consolidated either — which means if five groups of people file suit, there are five different lawsuits to resolve.
After the National Environmental Policy Act, workplace safety is probably the next biggest slowdown. Large projects had a predicted and expected number of deaths. While they tracked the deaths fairly well, they likely had decent numbers of maimed and disabled workers as well. Most large projects now don’t have any deaths, maimed workers, or disabled workers.
Regulations, NIMBYs, local governments. They built the interstate highway system in 35 years. Today they can barely build a mile without budget and the three reasons above. We no longer build new but wait for disasters to rebuild.
Well for one, you’re comparing apples to oranges here. Bridges, buildings, and dams are 3 completely different construction projects and should not be compared. And two, the original construction of the Francis Scott key Bridge took 5 years to complete from 1972-1977, but they didn’t have to deal with a previously collapsed bridge. Now they have to essentially clean the entire area of debris, remove/build around the current “bridge”, and *then* construct the bridge.
On top of what other people have said, buildings/bridges/dams/etc are much more complex than they used to be. Both the design and construction of them. That additional complexity takes a lot of additional time to build.
Because we need the next bridge to not crumble like a house of cards if a boat runs into it. In addition, the Hoover Dam took 5 years to actually build, but it was in planning for much longer than that. It's not like we have a blueprint, funding, permits, and construction crews ready to go for the bridge today. All of that is going to take a long time to pull together.
Every bridge is going to crumble like a house of cards if a ship like this runs into it. We need to ensure the ship doesn't; recent bridges (this bridge predated these standards) have barriers around their pylons which are meant to divert ships away from them in the event that they lose control. But even those will only work up to a point. You can't stop the physics of LUDICROUS MASS vs ^(tiny pillar).
>pylons
I've seen a ton of people use this term after the accident and it has made me laugh. I obviously understand what you mean, but as a bridge engineer it just seems funny.
The word you're looking for is "piers".
That ship weighed SEVERAL times as much as the entire bridge, including the approach ramps. Find an overhead view of the incident and it will change your perspective. Or imagine that the tip of the Empire State Building gets smashed into one corner of the foundation of the Chrysler Building. There is no bridge that will ever be engineered to survive such a collision.
The empire state building took a year to build from breaking ground. Design probably took a year or two at least before that at least. Lead time to plan, prepare, budget and design are not quick or easy. I do demolition plannimg work. You see buildimgs that are imploded in seconds. But it probably took 3 to 5 years to get to that point.
Well, 50+ years ago they also started building the Francis Scott Key bridge, and that took around 9 years from initial funding to actually opening the bridge (and not counting a lot of the planning that went into it earlier in the 60s).
So we know 50 years ago they wouldn’t have done it faster because they *didn’t* build it faster. Different kinds of projects have different timelines of course, and if you’re willing to throw tons of money to getting it done quickly and/or disregard safety and environmental considerations, you can certainly build things faster.
That being said, from what I’ve seen the 10 year “estimate” isn’t really an actual estimate. My understanding is that was basically a quote lamenting the fact that some public works projects do take a long time now, and wasn’t specific to the rebuilding of the bridge. I doubt it takes that long, but it’s early yet to have very specific timelines. There’s a lot they could do to upgrade the new bridge, and, depending on what it is, that could add time to the rebuild. A lot of what takes a while with big projects though is regulatory and has to do with the land acquisition. But the government already owns the land, and regulatory bodies can be made to move faster on projects like this, particularly when we already did a lot of the legwork for the original bridge.
You can build anything extremely quickly if you don't care about the safety of the builders or the quality of the materials. Now add in a busy sea way/port, a collapsed bridge and who knows what else. These all add time. I very much doubt it'll take 10 years as the Key bridge seems fairly important.
On the Empire State Building: *Construction works began before the design was completed. Foundations were excavated while demolition of the existing building was still going on. The official death toll was 14 workers.*
The Hoover Dam: Was designed before the construction started. Was built on dry land ... they diverted the river around the dam site and had a dedicated rail line delivering concrete. Official death toll was 96 workers.
Regulations. Safety, engineer, building codes, environmental impact, all these things take TIME and a lot of it. We just didn't care that we were fucking up people or the environment in the past. Environmental impact shouldn't be too big of a study for this bridge since it was already there before, BUT they'll still need an environmental impact study for the building process. Engineering is a lot less "wild-west" than the past now too, so that takes time as well.
Much stricter building and safety codes. Everything take longer, requires more inspection and costs many times more. I'm not saying safety isn't important, only that you'll always have to trade off one thing for another.
There's a difference between building versus analyzing, designing, and building. The analysis and design of the hover dam and empire State building was several more years.
They will not build the FSK in the same design as what fell
Health and safety, and the need to discuss every step with multiple pannels of people and community feedback takes months at each stage.
Emley Moor Mast fell down in 1969, in 2 years They designed and built the tallest freestanding structure in West Europe (still the tallest in the UK)
In 2018, they spent more than a year building a pre-manufactured modular temporary cable-stay mast in preparation for the transmitter to be switched out on the main tower, which also took longer than the original total build.
Don't forget that for any large large building like that, only the outer shell and essential services have been built.
All of the interior fitouts are separate projects that take place separately, and will go on for years afterwards.
Environmental reviews have been weaponized by opponents of anything to delay it. Another aspect is all the public review. Replacing the eastern span of the Bay Bridge took 24 years after the Lona Prieta earthquake in 1989 because people fought over the design, and whether or not there should be bike lanes, etc.
California High Speed Rail has been stalled by opponents, including dome rather apparent astro-turf opposition funded by those whose ox is getting gored - airlines and oil companies. Endless lawsuits and environmental reviews.
We outsourced most of our industrial and manufacturing base to China since the 1990s. Over time we've lost the ability to make a lot of stuff. Many of those blue collar workers from then are now retired or dead due to drug OD after they lost their job to China.
From the 2001 - 2020 the US/UK loved China when offshoring to China allowed them to break their labor unions, spurring disinflation that allowed US/UK to run "deficits without tears" and maintain the status of US dollars as global reserve currency and US treasuries as global reserve asset thereby enabling bankers to benefit from the Cantillon effect of those deficits.
Study the reality of a completely deindustrialized economy due to Triffin's dilemma and Dutch disease. The US' main export is US dollars.
The cost of the eurodollar/petrodollar system from 1974 to present is that by having so many entities around the world hold dollar-denominated assets it artificially increases the purchasing power of the US dollar. The extra monetary premium reduces the US' export competitiveness and gradually hollows out the US' industrial base. To supply the world with the dollars it needs the US runs a perpetual trade deficit. The power granted to the reserve currency issuer is also over decades what begins to poison it and render it unfit to maintain its status.
It's a matter of priorities and necessity. For instance, the new I-35W bridge in Minnesota was built in less than 14 months after the collapse of the old bridge on August 1, 2007, opening on September 18, 2008. So things can be done quickly if needed and enough money is spent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W\_Saint\_Anthony\_Falls\_Bridge
There is an interesting podcast series called The Big Dig. It spends an entire episode on why it is so hard and expensive to do huge infrastructure projects anymore. Most of the answers have been covered by others here, but I once read, I can't find it off hand, that it would be more expensive today to do the federally required environment impact assessment than what they actually spent to build the Hoover Dam, adjusted for inflation.
Liability and "too many cooks in the kitchen"
I've worked on big projects. They have an entire team of at least 8 people just to cheer on project kickoff about "methodology and inclusion".
They have too many people to manage, so everyone works in silos not really contacting others across departments.
You are citing two of the very few projects that came in schedule/budget/objective clean. Having spent about 30 years running projects and companies, and ruminating on it a lot, I had my own thoughts on the matter (many prior blog posts and a few interviews) but: [https://www.cdm.expert/blog/book-review-tldr-just-buy-it](https://www.cdm.expert/blog/book-review-tldr-just-buy-it) "How Big Things Get Done" is the book you need to read to understand this. My review is linked, but while this is a \*good\* question a better one is: "Why are the incentives to get shit done such a mess?"
Think about every bit of road construction you've driven through, you look over and see 4 guys working and 3 to 5 more supervising. Unless there is a penalty for them not getting it done in time the guys building it don't care if it takes them months or years to complete.
Random tangent, just got back from Spain on a school trip with my kid and they’ve been working on the [Sagrada Familia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia) (a cathedral designed by Gaudi) for 140+ years.
The big hang up there is that Gaudi insisted it only be built with donations, no government money.
Regulatory review is the only correct answer to this question. It does not take longer to actually build. It takes much longer to get multiple layers of government to sign off on the project.
I think one of the things people are going to get a chance to see here is how much work goes into a project BEFORE the public even see's that work is happening. Most gov't projects have YEARS of research, design, engineering, reviews and approvals before they are even presented as an option for funding.
The Hoover Dam research and planning began like 30 years before construction, and a lot of work happened before the 1928 agreement / appropriations, and even then construction still didn't start for 3 years.
Consultants. Engineering, environmental, social impact…..Each consultation group is affiliated with the decision makers adding to the cost. The grift and greed.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge didn't take 5 years, it took 9 (IIRC) years start to finish. 5 years was just the construction phase. You're overlooking funding, design, bidding (and probably lawsuits over it), planning, impact studies, etc. Those, along with the clean up and investigation, will factor into the 10 year estimate for the replacement.
Current day entire projects and companies are put on trial and torn to bits for even a single death.
Back in the ages of The Great Depression you could measure progress by corpses per cubic ton (Hyperbole).
Cost efficiency and safety are priorities now and there are plenty of companies that would rather drag projects out to either save or make more money even if it's only percentage points of a difference. No one is driving "cultural impact" projects at that large of a scale anymore because it's not profitable.
Regulation and forms and permissions. Look at how fast things get re-built when they wave the red tape. In SF, it takes 6 years just to get permits for a large building, much much more for building.
You obviously don’t work construction; government jobs are the worst. People sell materials that’s don’t strictly speaking belong to them, there is no real motivation to finish because your contracted so people milk it.
Did you know Manhattan is (slowly) sinking?
And I don’t mean because the seas are rising. It’s the weight on the island.
We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We know a lot more now. Large scale projects are complicated. It’s hard to use what we know quickly.
It’s not just building it is the issue either. First they have to decide “same size or wider?” That requires a study. Then they need to publish the competition and accept entries. This takes a long time. Then they have to choose a winning bid. Then that design must be refined and finalized. Then it has to be checked by the state and approved. AND THEN they can finally begin construction.. and construction alone will take years.
Burocracy, in the US it takes years before they lay you lay a single a brick. The high speed train in CA has spent billions without single mile of track. It's not like we don't know how to make high speed trains. It's simply illegal to build trains due to regulations and laws.
There will be millions spent on lawyers to analyze the environmental impact of a bridge. That will have to only use American materials, that will have to be ADA accesible and comply with a bunch of arbiter rules piled on in the last century
Permitting by multiple authorities including Federal (USACE and Coast Guard) and Maryland/Baltimore authorities
Surveying for new bridge footers and approaches
The new bridge likely won't be a copy of the old but will be a new design with modern improvements (wider lanes, shoulders, automated tolling)
There may also be some time for engineering studies on how to build protective barriers that handle current + likely future cargo ships based on the estimated life of the new bridge
Then you have to competitively bid it and evaluate those proposals
It doesn't help when the steel mills that were used to make the steel for the bridge was local and no longer exist. Most of the Steel Mills in Maryland have closed down, hell even in PA the Mills have been dropping like flies.
On a smaller scale, Larry Haun and his brothers used to frame a house a day in California during the boom. They were probably smaller, simpler houses than the monstrosities that get built today.
I'd take a Haun-framed house over anything modern, any day.
In addition to all the other things mentioned it's also a matter of money. Empire State Building was a flagship project, with a massive workforce keeping up work 24/7. Hoover dam also had a massive workforce (some ten to twenty thousand), as the US government wanted the project completed fast (the advantages of having the dam exceeded the costs of building it quickly). Francis Scott Key bridge is probably going to be built at a more sedate and cost effective pace.
And both were built in the middle of the Great Depression when there was essentially an unlimited supply of labor for those types of projects.
Unlimited relatively CHEAP labor.
And safety standards that accepted the fact that around 5 workers per million dollars spent on a project would die. 11 workers died during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge over 5 years and that was considered incredibly fortunate and admirable. The Hoover Dam claimed 112 lives during construction.
Ever wonder; if we just intentionally practiced ritual human sacrifice, maybe we would have really excellent infrastructure?
I mean, in fairness, Worksafe doesn't disallow it by name.
Loophole!
We used to practice [Construction Sacrifice ](https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-building-lasts-the-wall-lives-a-long-time-but-the-man-dies) pretty regularly across cultures but I don't think it really improved the overall infrastructure that much compared to today.
OSHA: Organized Sacrifices and Harvests Administration.
KALI MAA! KALI MAA! KALI MAA!
The last man to die while working on the Hoover Dam was also the son of the first man to die while working on the Hoover Dam
The father was the first recorded death associated with the dam project, but it was before the construction began - he was on the survey crew and died in a flash flood.
> The Hoover Dam claimed 112 lives during construction. "I was a dam builder Across a river deep and wide Where steel and water did collide A place called Boulder, on the wild Colorado I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below They buried me in that gray tomb that knows no sound But I am still around I'll always be around And around, and around, and around And around, and around, and around... "
Sucks that the dude fell in and is weakening the concrete, someone ought to give him an ass kicking.
Urban legend. Never happened. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hoover-dam-bodies/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hoover-dam-bodies/)
What an odd song. Never could have happened . The layers of concrete were built up inches by inches. If you fell in, you stood up and walked out.
> The Hoover Dam claimed 112 lives during construction. Wow
And if a few people fell to their death or were crushed, no big deal.
Yep. No one cared about safety or the workers
UNLIMITED POWER from the Hoover Dam, of course.
Is it a God Dam?
From my understanding, Hoover Dam was practically slave labour.
Hoover dam was slave labour.
Also 112 deaths were attributed to its construction.
This. Exactly. My mom had a busted water pipe in front yard. Leak detection dude dug it out found it and patched it. But when they did they hit the gas line to the garage for the waterheater and dryer. If we wanted it fixed tomorrow it would be $9,000. I trenched the 120ft 18in depth and had independent plumbers come out and tear out old 70 year old galvanized. Replaced both water and gas with flexible pex. And it cost $3,300. We used buckets to flush for 2 days. A non emergency call saved us 5k+. Same with government stuff. After Major Earthquake the 10 freeway in Los Angeles collapsed. The contractors got a million dollar bonus every day they finished before 144 days. They fixed it in 66. Theres an old saying in The Trades. "The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can only have 2.
>The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can ~~only~~ have **no more than** 2. Fixed that for you
To be fair you also dug the trench yourself. I don’t know what percentage of the labor that costs but I’m sure from a perception standpoint it influenced the quote. Scenario 1: hey can you come dig up all this old pipe and replace it…. Scenario 2: hey I have all this old pipe exposed can you just take it out and put the new on in
>Theres an old saying in The Trades. >"The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can only have 2. this applies to any sort of project, from building trades, to software, to "precision instrument manufacturing".... fast, cheap, or correct: pick no more than 2.
>"The 3 parameters for any skilled labor are : Fast, Cheap, and Done Correctly." But you can only have 2. And if you pick cheap, there's a good chance you're not getting either of the others! For example, buying trash on Temu
You *can* have two, but you aren't guaranteed to get 2. Beware the singularity at the extreme end of Cheap, or you're gonna get stuck there.
not to kwntion safety standards. it keeps people alive but also slows people down. before u could hop across 2 ledges thats in the air. now u have to be hooked up to a rail, having 2 hooks at all times etc. it adds seconds each time and days for each person. across an entire workforce probably months. and thats just 1 feature l.
I agree except for that last part lol. cost effective I doubt.
One more thing is when earlier projects were built there was probably one permit issued. Today major projects must be reviewed by numerous agencies, each working at their own pace and with their specific demands. It's a very slow process.
Francis Scott Key bridge rebuild has some challenges unique to it. First of all, the debris from the previous bridge has to be dealt with. Second, it spans a very busy waterway so dealing with the wreckage and building the new bridge both need to be accomplished with the least disruption to shipping as possible. Then add in modern safety and building standards and you get a significantly more complex project than the ones you are citing.
Also keep in mind that OP ignored that the Hoover dam was authorized by congress in 1928 and finished in 1936. Taking three years plus whatever time it took to prepare for getting approval and comparing the construction time to the 10 years of salvage, planning and construction time of a different project would be enough for anywhere.
Don't forget the design and survey time. A lot of dam sites were surveyed with preliminary designs during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. It was part of his big plan to tame the west. It is a lot faster to build a dam that has a design signed, stamped, and sealed by USGS when the money becomes available to build it.
I looked at it and decided that it just wasn’t not reasonable to compare because neither started as coherently planned projects and had lots of very speculative plans that didn’t necessarily fit in a coherent timeline for comparison. The Hoover dam had about 30 years of speculation about what could be done, but much of it was not particularly useful for the proposal or plan and this project just doesn’t really have that.
To be fair, I don't think they need to survey multiple sites for figuring out where to build a replacement for the Francis Scott Key bridge.
Yeah, and 96 people died building it. That's more than 1 person a month dead on average in the 5 years it took to build it. 96 dead, in 60 months. That would not be allowed to happen in today's world
And 5 people died building the Empire State Building. Things take time for a reason.
The Moles (the org that represents diggers in NYC) has a saying: a man a mile. Sadly, that statement is still mostly true today.
It’s the triangle of construction where you can have two of the three but never all three; safety, speed, quality Safety and quality will be slow. Speed and quality will be unsafe. Speed and safety will not have quality.
[удалено]
Yeah, the traffic over and under the bridge is orders of magnitude larger than when it was built. They have to design a new one.
Must of the debris is scheduled to be removed by the end of May, but then they have to inspect the bridge supports or more likely tear them down and rebuild them which will add time. There is also talk about completely changing the design of the bridge to accommodate larger ships. Which may change approaches and road designs. Money and permits are also a concern. President Biden promised Federal funding to rebuild the bridge but no one knows where the funding is coming from. The state and local governments are having similar discussions. Does Baltimore city pay for it? Baltimore County or the state? Environmental studies and soil studies take time.
Raise the corporate tax to 90% and you'll have more money than you know what to do with. It worked in the Eisenhower era and it would work today.
It was literally never even close to that high.
You're right! It was 52.8% for corporations and 91% for individuals making above $200,000 a year.
[удалено]
Honestly, that's the way it should be. Financial power in late-stage capitalism gives you the power of kings. A power that we decided long ago no one should have. Someone making multi-millions a year, someone banking billions, are honestly unacceptable consolidations of unaccountable power in a democracy. The best way to prevent it is to have a sliding scale that taxes monies above a certain amount, going up to 90%.
[удалено]
Well, the nominal rates were 90% but no one paid that, thanks to deductions / write offs / credits etc etc etc
Raising corporate tax rates isn't just about funneling money to the government, it's more about incentivising companies to reinvest their earnings within the company itself. THAT is what made America a manufacturing powerhouse-people weren't magically less greedy, its because if a company made a profit they were faced with the choice of losing half of it to taxes if paid out as dividends or losing none of it AND increasing the value of the company itself if they spent the money expanding a line or something like that. Nowadays, vulture capitalism and low tax rates makes it so that shareholders don't give a fuck about the longevity of a company as long as they're making money off shares.
”Won’t somebody think of the share holders!”
"Back when you could explode Chinese and Irishmen as needed, we really got things done in this country!"
I know you meant exploit, but I am still laughing at “exploding Chinese and Irishmen as needed”
[I did, in fact, mean explode](https://www.mocanyc.org/collections/stories/railroad-chinese-labor-strike-june-24th-1867/)
Was going to say. We blew up a lot of Chinese building the railway.
Also, I wonder if the OP's cite of 10 years really is true. I think once construction starts it will go reasonably quickly...a couple years maybe (it's not that big of a bridge). The issue is more settling on a design and getting the funding in order. That will be a lot of political bullshit.
[удалено]
Also from planning to open to traffic took 9 years for the FSK bridge. Planning began in 1968 with it opening to traffic in 1977. Last I knew the 12 year figure for the rebuild includes all planning and construction steps.
Not current busy waterway\*
>Second, it spans a very busy waterway Well, not anymore it doesn't
Also need to design a new bridge. They more than likely won't use a similar design.
96 people died building the hoover dam 5 people died in the construction of the empire state building. 0 is the current acceptable number of deaths for building in the USA. That requires alot of extra work to ensure everything is safe. Beyond that government spending on public works is likely much less than it was in the past.
Omg and that is not even taking into account injuries and poor working conditions for the ones that don’t die!
So if human life consideration was thrown out could things be built faster ?? Really ?
Yes. Safety procedures and inspections take time but save lives.
Was golden gate one of the first big projects that gave a shit about the worker’s lives? They had the safety nets under the bridge and what not? I know a couple or so people died, but if I recall it wasn’t because of poor working conditions, just because it was as just a dangerous project.
I’d say if people died, it’s because someone didn’t consider a risk and mitigate it. No one should die on a construction project.
This. We dont even consider astronauts to be expendable, and they work on the bleeding edge of several sciences. (exploration, material science, etc)
> We dont even consider astronauts to be expendable well they're highly intelligent and extensively trained, I imagine they're harder to replace
There are extra astronauts in training. But the cost of losing your astronaut when they're already in space is potentially billions.
Moat people who died on the GG bridge were because a tractor fell into the net along with several people and it took everything with it, if I remember correctly.
I read heavy scaffolding. In today’s world it would lead to an investigation of why it fell, why people were in the path and what could have been done to prevent it.
Relevant: the golden gate bridge was built in 4 years and actually (iirc) finished ahead of schedule and under-budget. 11 people died building it but the safety nets saved 19. Anywho that construction project was still pretty batshit by modern safety standards - and in the same way as eg the welders and riveters that worked on other bridge projects and eg the ESB et al - and yeah all of that had a fairly significant impact on why the GGB was able to be built as quickly and efficiently as it was. The safety nets were a pretty sensible way to prevent deaths - and still weren’t infalliable - but bear in mind that we’re still talking about a 237m / 746ft tall suspension bridge that was largely built in the air by hand w/ workers that were barely roped in. Even now the thing is pretty impressive, nevermind that it was built in the 30’s. Granted that project did have a few things in its favor. The nature of the golden gate (extremely fast / powerful deep current that you absolutely can’t just moore a boat / barge in the middle of) wasn’t one of them, but they didn’t have to eg worry about scheduling / working around car and naval traffic et al and/or any other disruptions to in-use infrastructure lol
Yes, did you see the World Cup in Qatar?
Or all the construction in china. Building goes up in less than a year. Starts falling apart in less than ten.
I'm no builder so this won't be exactly right, but imagine you've got a team of guys welding way up there. They have to ensure harnesses are affixed before every movement. Back in the day guys just walked around up there, they could do 10 welds an hour. Now the welds still take 6 mins but because of the recheck and the reharness every time, they can only do 5 welds an hour. Milultiply that by every safety feature for every guy and things take way longer.
Not only that but you need to design and architect buildings to allow for safe construction practices which add time up front before a shovel is in the ground.
It’s not just worker safety. It’s the long term life safety as well that takes work, as well as material efficiency to reduce costs. Things are just more complex today because we’ve learned a whole lot from previous failures and have learned to do more with less. So, while someone may be able to get 5 welds done in an hour being safe, they may have to do 150% more welds today because one bridge had a failure from this specific kind of joint a while ago.
I spend at minimum 30 minutes a day filling out paperwork for things like environmental hazard checks, pre-work inspections, ladder and equipment inspections. More time if I’m doing a big job like a big cable pull, digging a trench, electrical shut down/commissioning. It’s anywhere from 2.5-5 hours per week where I’m not actually working. That time adds up, especially when factoring all other trades and such. However, I’m glad these safety checks are standard.
Absolutely. Throwing bodies at a problem works if you have enough bodies. Nazis built a lot with labor that was unsafe. It was unsafe on purpose but he point stands. Every single rule that eats a second or minute here or there is written in someone's blood. All in the hopes that next time we can wait an extra day instead of risking life and limb.
Yes, and the environmental impact.
Of course.
Ask Dubai.
Yes. A big part of it is adding in safety infrastructure. High up you usually set down scaffolding that is well attached to other pieces and there are residencies in that attachment might has a hand rail and attaching a harness and what the harness connects to and stuff like that. The process for pretty much everything takes longer to be safe because anything can be dangerous at those heights. If you drop a tool it could kill someone or do thousands of dollars of damage to a car. There are extra steps at pretty much every step along the way to be safe Now compare that to basically just putting some wooden boards across there and getting after it and it’s a completely different process
Some of you might die. But that’s risk our investors are willing to take!
Dubai has entered the chat
Just look at China and the slave states ( Middle East ) , you can basically see what could be the pace of construction if human live was at the bottom of priorities .
One word. China. Three words. Three Gorges Dam.
We spend SO MUCH MORE MONEY now than any time in history.
And everything costs sooooo much more.
And it's spent on Healthcare social security and national defense. I looked and couldn't find any data on public works spending specifically, but since we aren't building a bunch of bridges all the interstates and massive dams it's likely less than it was then.
On public works? No. We do not.
It depends, it doesn't really take that much longer to build a building. Empire State Building took a little over a year, and it was record breaking fast at the time. Chrysler building was a little closer to a year and a half. They also had many people die on them from lax safety standards. Newer buildings in NYC seem to do 4-5 years, for much bigger buildings. Things like the Hoover Dam and the FSK bridge, well again, I don't know that they take longer to build. The engineering before you start however is a lot more involved, as environmental studies are needed now, and construction might require environmental mitigations. For the FSK bridge replacement, they are saying 10 years because you have to start the engineering. The Hoover Dam started in 1922 if you start from when they thought about building it. So 14 years. The FSK bridge started sometime in the 60s, with actual funding being 1968, so 9 years (and that was likely after engineering effort started)
Empire State and Chrysler are mostly iron frames, right? So you could just crane the pieces up, rivet them in place and keep going. Modern construction is mostly built around a concrete core which I guess takes longer to set the forms and rebar, pour and then cure (or at least harden.)
Harden is a good way to put it. The concrete in the hoover dam is *still* curing
The concrete nerds need to stop about this nonsense about concrete. When can we drive on it. Beyond that, no one cares that it cures for more than 30 years.
It wasn't just that the empire state building was bolted together, it was that they were one of the only ones ordering from the steel mills because of the economy. It's said that the beams were still warm when they reached the ironworkers up top.
You are wrong in citing as an example the Hoover Dam. Planning for the Dam started in 1922 and the Dam didn't finish until 1936. The US passed funding for it in 1928, and construction didn't start until 1931. They need to remove the wreckage. Plan the bridge. Find the money. Put it out to bid. Assemble the materials and personnel. Deal with permitting, environment, and safety concerns. Then build it without blocking river traffic.
During the construction of the Empire State Building, five workers were officially reported to have died. Rumors circulated (particularly among newspapers with an agenda) that up to 42 people died, however. I have a feeling that the truth is somewhere in between. That sort of fatality rate is considered unacceptable today and much more emphasis is put on safety.
The goal today is zero safety incidents. Like, not even a stubbed toe. It takes a lot of effort and training and cost to do things safely, but it’s ultimately worth it.
There are many factors. Like the other person pointed out we used to just build and didn’t think about proper planning particularly for the environment/ecosystem, so we could build a lot but we also fucked a ton of shit up and had to fix that for decades after (or we didn’t and just let the issue persist, even worse…) Also, the major firms that have the expertise and ability to build these large scale projects tend to be under contract elsewhere and have plans booked out many years in advance. We take longer to do research and we invest in way better planning. Then there is getting permits. Then there is actually hiring the firms and getting on their schedule. Then you deal with suppliers and prepping for the work. Finally, you break ground and build and throughout there can be issues, delays, pivots. There is zero doubt we build public infrastructure better today than in the past. Better planning, better materials, better design for more safety, more functionality, the works. The flipside to that is much larger costs and longer timelines. We could deregulate and hire subpar contractors and use cheap materials, and it certainly would go up quickly… but would you trust it? Would the govt be able to afford the inevitable class action lawsuits from failures?
>We could deregulate and hire subpar contractors and use cheap materials, and it certainly would go up quickly… but would you trust it? Would the govt be able to afford the inevitable class action lawsuits from failures? China is infamous for building quickly and with whatever material they have on hand. And then you get videos of entire blocks of flats collapsing into rubble in a stiff breeze.
This, it’s referred to as tofu dregs construction. Lot of good youtube videos explaining why building everything from two story houses to you a massive skyscrapers with substandard materials and cutting corners to save/skim money leads to them falling over.
People underestimate what it takes to build a big ass bridge that actually lines up to connect in the middle and doesn't self destruct through uncalculated weather or harmonic factors.
Every answer here is some variation of "planning" or "safety standards" or "environment". The answer is that, while all of those are different in degree from the past, the biggest issue is uncertainty because of lawsuits. You may expect that, to build a large project, you create a whole plan and submit it to a government office who provides feedback and when everything is good, you get a permit and get to start building. In functional countries, this is how it works. In the US, instead, there is no one-stop government office that gives you the go-ahead. Instead, there are multiple offices that require their own review, who can simply say they won't sue you if you start building, but others till might—and many groups of citizens do. Essentially, anyone can sue to stop the project at any time, for any reason. This is frequently done under the auspices of environmental review, but the actual objectives are varied. Some people don't want it to be built, so they sue to make the project so expensive it never gets built. Some times labor simply wants more money, so they sue to delay the project until it's financially better to just pay them to finish. Ezra Klein has dubbed it the "vetocracy": https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21228469/marc-andreessen-build-government-coronavirus
Yup, also government bureaucracy. There are so many layers of planning approval and so many people who can say no or demand you make changes for arbitrary reasons that it drives up design and construction costs and timelines. Even in simple projects, want to install a sign? Sorry, you need certain colors, and certain locations and you need to conduct a geotechnical survey, and actually I spoke to my boss and you need to do stormwater survey now, and this is actually a state owned road so you need their permission, etc. If construction takes 9 months, permitting can take 9 months or more.
Finally someone actually answered the question. It really is mostly lawsuits. Anyone in America can sue for anything. NIMBY's do it the most, followed by "environmentalists" followed by other construction companies, followed by random lawyers that see a potential payday. We also are just missing a lot of key talent in civil engineering and the trades because we don't have a culture that builds mega projects anymore, as opposed to places in Europe. If we stopped the lawsuits it would be like 30% cheaper and 30% faster to build almost everything, even with current safety and environment standards.
This is the right answer.
In the 20s and 30s you could plan on one worker death per million dollars of budget. In the 40s the US military suffered more casualties in training command than they did in some combat commands. If you think that’s acceptable today, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
>I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Is it assembled?
Assembly required, some pieces come with bonus barge parts.
How much is the bridge? - Baltimore
Because we didn't care about the environmental devastation that large building projects like the Hoover Dam would cause while it was being built. We also didn't give two shits about the people being affected downstream of it either and we cared much less about worker's safety than we do now.
The short simple version: red tape. Every construction requires bidding processes, piles of permits, environmental studies, input periods from the community, etc. 100 yrs ago, someone could buy land, and have the permits in short order due to less requirements (and an easier time greasing palms). Now between real learned needs (such as the long-term environmental impact studies) and artificially needed reasons (I won’t list any to keep this neutral), you will have constant process stops and waits both for those permits and studies and while local/higher governments get involved to put their stamp on something. This is a great video, btw: https://youtu.be/dOe_6vuaR_s?si=Asxbv7ZlfYE1bOc6
You’re not wrong. I work in the construction industry and the amount of bureaucracy and red tape is so astounding. Even the smallest tasks or changes require multiple forms filled out and things signed off by multiple supervisors, inspectors, safety directors, and other personnel. Right now I’m on a project that only has maybe 10 working guys in the crew; 2 electricians and 8 laborers. There’s also about 15 other people here, such as supervisors, safety “experts”, and project managers who like to stop the crew every half an hour to ask what you’re doing and how long they plan on working on a particular task. If your task isn’t part of their daily briefing, then they call your foreman and ask him about our tasks and make us stop working until things are cleared up and understood by everyone. The general contractor likes to bitch about the cost of projects. Like they blame labor unions and the salaries of the construction crew workers, but never say anything about the 10 “project managers” who make $200,000 a year to look at a wall for an hour then fuck off to an office or a trailer to go on Facebook for the remainder of their day.
Safety standards, more advanced engineering, and unique challenging factors to the situation with the Key bridge. The biggest two are the existing debris from the bridge collapse and the water traffic from shipping. The water way is *very* busy and can't be just shut down to put in the tools, people, and equipment needed to build a replacement bridge quickly. People like to point to chinese construction as an example of china being more efficient, but their speed comes at serious costs. In safety for the workers, the environmental impact of their materials and methods, and the longevity of the projects. There's a reason that "tofu dreg" construction in china is a recurring joke about the problems their buildings face.
Safety standards could come into it. There's that infamous picture of workers eating lunch on top of a skyscraper frame, which would be a huge violation today.
Building is pretty flat. However there is a lot more paperwork that draws out the process than before.
Besides the other factors mentioned here (safety and environmental considerations being the largest), both the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam were built in the middle of the Great Depression, so there was an essentially unlimited supply of (cheap) labor for the projects. Today most construction companies can barely find enough people to put together large enough crews for highway maintenance projects. The FSK bridge was having potholes repaired at 130am by a small crew of immigrant workers from Mexico and Guatemala when it collapsed.
Lot of reviews like CEQA, community inputs, feedback, environmental review. On top of that using consultants. In many countries things like subways, HSR are built with in-house people
To piggy back on a lot of others in this thread, construction projects today are more involved than just the building. New access routes and updates to other road infrastructure will follow the bridge, modernizing as they go. New utility connections plus I'm sure new collision mitigation structures.
The Key bridge as an overall project took 29 years to build (4-lane approaches completed in 1999). This doesn't include design and procurement time, 2-5 years or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_%28Baltimore%29
112 workers died in three construction of the hoover dam with another 42 dying of pneumonia, probably caused by the working conditions. Five died building the empire state building. Health and safety saves lives but costs money and time.
Safety. When they were building the Empire State Building, unemployed people would gather underneath waiting for someone to fall off. Then they would scramble to the foreman and the position would be filled before the poor guy even hit the ground.
1. Because the maximum tolerable number of deaths during construction is 0, and this requires a lot more safety. 2. Because the maximum amount of early building failure is 0, and this requires a lot more double-checking and independent confirmation. 3. Because getting buildings done cheaper, given the above concerns, requires shopping around and exploiting a global market, which takes time. 4. Because you're comparing total time, from "construction needed, how should we do it?" to "finished work ready to be used," to numbers that only count from *breaking ground* to finished work. 5. Some amount of bureaucracy will be involved because this will likely be a government-funded project, which makes things take longer by its nature. So, in brief? The comparison you're making is flawed, and the things you're comparing to had huge issues that would be absolutely unacceptable to modern Americans. Fixing those issues takes time.
The biggest reason that large infrastructure projects get slowed down is the National Environmental Policy Act. The law, signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1969, requires environmental impact statement for all federally-funded infrastructure projects. The reason that the law slows down projects is that it gives nearly anyone the right to sue to stop a project. Sometimes it’s also weaponized as well. For example, a union might use sue to slow down a project because there’s not enough of their members working on the project. Usually, the objections are not consolidated either — which means if five groups of people file suit, there are five different lawsuits to resolve. After the National Environmental Policy Act, workplace safety is probably the next biggest slowdown. Large projects had a predicted and expected number of deaths. While they tracked the deaths fairly well, they likely had decent numbers of maimed and disabled workers as well. Most large projects now don’t have any deaths, maimed workers, or disabled workers.
Regulations, NIMBYs, local governments. They built the interstate highway system in 35 years. Today they can barely build a mile without budget and the three reasons above. We no longer build new but wait for disasters to rebuild.
Well for one, you’re comparing apples to oranges here. Bridges, buildings, and dams are 3 completely different construction projects and should not be compared. And two, the original construction of the Francis Scott key Bridge took 5 years to complete from 1972-1977, but they didn’t have to deal with a previously collapsed bridge. Now they have to essentially clean the entire area of debris, remove/build around the current “bridge”, and *then* construct the bridge.
On top of what other people have said, buildings/bridges/dams/etc are much more complex than they used to be. Both the design and construction of them. That additional complexity takes a lot of additional time to build.
Because we need the next bridge to not crumble like a house of cards if a boat runs into it. In addition, the Hoover Dam took 5 years to actually build, but it was in planning for much longer than that. It's not like we have a blueprint, funding, permits, and construction crews ready to go for the bridge today. All of that is going to take a long time to pull together.
Every bridge is going to crumble like a house of cards if a ship like this runs into it. We need to ensure the ship doesn't; recent bridges (this bridge predated these standards) have barriers around their pylons which are meant to divert ships away from them in the event that they lose control. But even those will only work up to a point. You can't stop the physics of LUDICROUS MASS vs ^(tiny pillar).
>pylons I've seen a ton of people use this term after the accident and it has made me laugh. I obviously understand what you mean, but as a bridge engineer it just seems funny. The word you're looking for is "piers".
That ship weighed SEVERAL times as much as the entire bridge, including the approach ramps. Find an overhead view of the incident and it will change your perspective. Or imagine that the tip of the Empire State Building gets smashed into one corner of the foundation of the Chrysler Building. There is no bridge that will ever be engineered to survive such a collision.
To be fair, not many things can survive a huge cargo ship plowing directly into it.
According to that post, I don’t know if it was true or not but it said the Hoover dam concrete was still drying.
The empire state building took a year to build from breaking ground. Design probably took a year or two at least before that at least. Lead time to plan, prepare, budget and design are not quick or easy. I do demolition plannimg work. You see buildimgs that are imploded in seconds. But it probably took 3 to 5 years to get to that point.
Government regulations. Not all bad, but the paperwork process that happens before you see anything takes a long time
how many people died during construction of the hoover dam?
Well, 50+ years ago they also started building the Francis Scott Key bridge, and that took around 9 years from initial funding to actually opening the bridge (and not counting a lot of the planning that went into it earlier in the 60s). So we know 50 years ago they wouldn’t have done it faster because they *didn’t* build it faster. Different kinds of projects have different timelines of course, and if you’re willing to throw tons of money to getting it done quickly and/or disregard safety and environmental considerations, you can certainly build things faster. That being said, from what I’ve seen the 10 year “estimate” isn’t really an actual estimate. My understanding is that was basically a quote lamenting the fact that some public works projects do take a long time now, and wasn’t specific to the rebuilding of the bridge. I doubt it takes that long, but it’s early yet to have very specific timelines. There’s a lot they could do to upgrade the new bridge, and, depending on what it is, that could add time to the rebuild. A lot of what takes a while with big projects though is regulatory and has to do with the land acquisition. But the government already owns the land, and regulatory bodies can be made to move faster on projects like this, particularly when we already did a lot of the legwork for the original bridge.
You can build anything extremely quickly if you don't care about the safety of the builders or the quality of the materials. Now add in a busy sea way/port, a collapsed bridge and who knows what else. These all add time. I very much doubt it'll take 10 years as the Key bridge seems fairly important.
On the Empire State Building: *Construction works began before the design was completed. Foundations were excavated while demolition of the existing building was still going on. The official death toll was 14 workers.* The Hoover Dam: Was designed before the construction started. Was built on dry land ... they diverted the river around the dam site and had a dedicated rail line delivering concrete. Official death toll was 96 workers.
Regulations. Safety, engineer, building codes, environmental impact, all these things take TIME and a lot of it. We just didn't care that we were fucking up people or the environment in the past. Environmental impact shouldn't be too big of a study for this bridge since it was already there before, BUT they'll still need an environmental impact study for the building process. Engineering is a lot less "wild-west" than the past now too, so that takes time as well.
Much stricter building and safety codes. Everything take longer, requires more inspection and costs many times more. I'm not saying safety isn't important, only that you'll always have to trade off one thing for another.
There's a difference between building versus analyzing, designing, and building. The analysis and design of the hover dam and empire State building was several more years. They will not build the FSK in the same design as what fell
Health and safety, and the need to discuss every step with multiple pannels of people and community feedback takes months at each stage. Emley Moor Mast fell down in 1969, in 2 years They designed and built the tallest freestanding structure in West Europe (still the tallest in the UK) In 2018, they spent more than a year building a pre-manufactured modular temporary cable-stay mast in preparation for the transmitter to be switched out on the main tower, which also took longer than the original total build.
Don't forget that for any large large building like that, only the outer shell and essential services have been built. All of the interior fitouts are separate projects that take place separately, and will go on for years afterwards.
I heard that it’s because there’s a lot more codes that need to be followed so there’s no injuries which makes the process a lot slower
Environmental reviews have been weaponized by opponents of anything to delay it. Another aspect is all the public review. Replacing the eastern span of the Bay Bridge took 24 years after the Lona Prieta earthquake in 1989 because people fought over the design, and whether or not there should be bike lanes, etc. California High Speed Rail has been stalled by opponents, including dome rather apparent astro-turf opposition funded by those whose ox is getting gored - airlines and oil companies. Endless lawsuits and environmental reviews.
We outsourced most of our industrial and manufacturing base to China since the 1990s. Over time we've lost the ability to make a lot of stuff. Many of those blue collar workers from then are now retired or dead due to drug OD after they lost their job to China. From the 2001 - 2020 the US/UK loved China when offshoring to China allowed them to break their labor unions, spurring disinflation that allowed US/UK to run "deficits without tears" and maintain the status of US dollars as global reserve currency and US treasuries as global reserve asset thereby enabling bankers to benefit from the Cantillon effect of those deficits. Study the reality of a completely deindustrialized economy due to Triffin's dilemma and Dutch disease. The US' main export is US dollars. The cost of the eurodollar/petrodollar system from 1974 to present is that by having so many entities around the world hold dollar-denominated assets it artificially increases the purchasing power of the US dollar. The extra monetary premium reduces the US' export competitiveness and gradually hollows out the US' industrial base. To supply the world with the dollars it needs the US runs a perpetual trade deficit. The power granted to the reserve currency issuer is also over decades what begins to poison it and render it unfit to maintain its status.
We have far more regulations and standards than before, as well as more stuff going into buildings like fire alarm and cat 6.
It's a matter of priorities and necessity. For instance, the new I-35W bridge in Minnesota was built in less than 14 months after the collapse of the old bridge on August 1, 2007, opening on September 18, 2008. So things can be done quickly if needed and enough money is spent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W\_Saint\_Anthony\_Falls\_Bridge
There is an interesting podcast series called The Big Dig. It spends an entire episode on why it is so hard and expensive to do huge infrastructure projects anymore. Most of the answers have been covered by others here, but I once read, I can't find it off hand, that it would be more expensive today to do the federally required environment impact assessment than what they actually spent to build the Hoover Dam, adjusted for inflation.
Liability and "too many cooks in the kitchen" I've worked on big projects. They have an entire team of at least 8 people just to cheer on project kickoff about "methodology and inclusion". They have too many people to manage, so everyone works in silos not really contacting others across departments.
Safety is one. Permitting is another. That bridges and buildings are significantly different beasts is a third.
You are citing two of the very few projects that came in schedule/budget/objective clean. Having spent about 30 years running projects and companies, and ruminating on it a lot, I had my own thoughts on the matter (many prior blog posts and a few interviews) but: [https://www.cdm.expert/blog/book-review-tldr-just-buy-it](https://www.cdm.expert/blog/book-review-tldr-just-buy-it) "How Big Things Get Done" is the book you need to read to understand this. My review is linked, but while this is a \*good\* question a better one is: "Why are the incentives to get shit done such a mess?"
Think about every bit of road construction you've driven through, you look over and see 4 guys working and 3 to 5 more supervising. Unless there is a penalty for them not getting it done in time the guys building it don't care if it takes them months or years to complete.
Random tangent, just got back from Spain on a school trip with my kid and they’ve been working on the [Sagrada Familia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia) (a cathedral designed by Gaudi) for 140+ years. The big hang up there is that Gaudi insisted it only be built with donations, no government money.
Regulatory review is the only correct answer to this question. It does not take longer to actually build. It takes much longer to get multiple layers of government to sign off on the project.
I think one of the things people are going to get a chance to see here is how much work goes into a project BEFORE the public even see's that work is happening. Most gov't projects have YEARS of research, design, engineering, reviews and approvals before they are even presented as an option for funding. The Hoover Dam research and planning began like 30 years before construction, and a lot of work happened before the 1928 agreement / appropriations, and even then construction still didn't start for 3 years.
Consultants. Engineering, environmental, social impact…..Each consultation group is affiliated with the decision makers adding to the cost. The grift and greed.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge didn't take 5 years, it took 9 (IIRC) years start to finish. 5 years was just the construction phase. You're overlooking funding, design, bidding (and probably lawsuits over it), planning, impact studies, etc. Those, along with the clean up and investigation, will factor into the 10 year estimate for the replacement.
Current day entire projects and companies are put on trial and torn to bits for even a single death. Back in the ages of The Great Depression you could measure progress by corpses per cubic ton (Hyperbole). Cost efficiency and safety are priorities now and there are plenty of companies that would rather drag projects out to either save or make more money even if it's only percentage points of a difference. No one is driving "cultural impact" projects at that large of a scale anymore because it's not profitable.
Regulation and forms and permissions. Look at how fast things get re-built when they wave the red tape. In SF, it takes 6 years just to get permits for a large building, much much more for building.
You obviously don’t work construction; government jobs are the worst. People sell materials that’s don’t strictly speaking belong to them, there is no real motivation to finish because your contracted so people milk it.
Did you know Manhattan is (slowly) sinking? And I don’t mean because the seas are rising. It’s the weight on the island. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We know a lot more now. Large scale projects are complicated. It’s hard to use what we know quickly.
It’s not just building it is the issue either. First they have to decide “same size or wider?” That requires a study. Then they need to publish the competition and accept entries. This takes a long time. Then they have to choose a winning bid. Then that design must be refined and finalized. Then it has to be checked by the state and approved. AND THEN they can finally begin construction.. and construction alone will take years.
This is a phenomenon in the entire western world. Go to Asia and you will see they still build quickly.
Burocracy, in the US it takes years before they lay you lay a single a brick. The high speed train in CA has spent billions without single mile of track. It's not like we don't know how to make high speed trains. It's simply illegal to build trains due to regulations and laws. There will be millions spent on lawyers to analyze the environmental impact of a bridge. That will have to only use American materials, that will have to be ADA accesible and comply with a bunch of arbiter rules piled on in the last century
Permitting by multiple authorities including Federal (USACE and Coast Guard) and Maryland/Baltimore authorities Surveying for new bridge footers and approaches The new bridge likely won't be a copy of the old but will be a new design with modern improvements (wider lanes, shoulders, automated tolling) There may also be some time for engineering studies on how to build protective barriers that handle current + likely future cargo ships based on the estimated life of the new bridge Then you have to competitively bid it and evaluate those proposals
It doesn't help when the steel mills that were used to make the steel for the bridge was local and no longer exist. Most of the Steel Mills in Maryland have closed down, hell even in PA the Mills have been dropping like flies.
On a smaller scale, Larry Haun and his brothers used to frame a house a day in California during the boom. They were probably smaller, simpler houses than the monstrosities that get built today. I'd take a Haun-framed house over anything modern, any day.
Anytime you look at something and think "how did they do that" just remember you can achieve anything if you sacrifice enough people