Political Memes

As someone who works in the industry, do you have a theory as to why virtually all of our peer democracies are so much better and more cost efficient at building big public infrastructure?

You are assuming that they are. From what I see for every airport that is so glorious it is an affront to the gods there is raw sewage being poured on the ground an hour drive away. Countries are good at peices of infrastructure, sometimes. Japan is famous for this but only because no one is mentioning their powerlines or snail mail system or their M2M over fax nonsense. The Israelis got water management down pat but best not to talk about East Jerusalem. Generally speaking the US has better sewage systems than say the UK but rail not so much.

And it wasn’t always this way. We used to be able to get shit done, but something happened in the last few decades.

Yes, as a whole humanity is getting worse at infrastructure. There is plenty of blame to go around. I imagine it is a variation on cost disease. We only have so many technical people and if they are all working on Faceboot and Twatter they aren't optimizing the traffic lights.

In particular what would make my job easier and give the taxpayers a break:

• Allow long term maintenance calculations to be used in bidding. If company A is bidding say 100k and company B is bidding 90K but company A can prove that their solution will cost less in the long run, factor that in by some equation. There are dozens of ways I know how to lower my upfront cost and increase taxpayer long term cost. I would rather not do any of them.

• No more incentives to use local businesses. I know it sounds all cute and green on paper but in practice it creates monopolies and corruption. If the best water pumping system I can find for your town is in the another country please let me buy it.

• Backcharges are now banned. If you are unhappy with what was delivered give the company a chance to make it right or blackball them for a decade. There are better things to do with our time than waste it with lawyers trying to remember what was said casually in a meeting three years ago.

• No more requiring a PE unless someone can prove that a PE is required and at the same time do not let PE boards decide licensing. PEs are scarce, thus cost more. Because they are scare they can't train new ones. Additionally since they cost so much and improvements can't be made because no one is willing to pay for specs to be upgraded. That is why you have specs calling for components that haven't been made in decades and why innovations don't move around the sector.

• Solve the problem, not the secondary effects. For example right now we have crap electricity at a site and I am struggling with all motors overheating. Upgrade the electrical feeding the site instead of demanding that I deal with impact. "Can't you solve it in software?". No Johnathan, I can't software a solution to a motor melting for being demanded to give constant torque with 3rd world grade electricity.

• The top down pyramid model has been proven to be the most wasteful and slow to innovate. It only exists because it is easy. Stop using it to build infrastructure. Just because a kid knows a bit about cement doesn't mean they are experts on welding.

• Stop farming work out. Deal with one company. That company buys it from a catalog or they build it themselves.