This article’s details are good, but I found the argumentative route misleading: the specific example they chose wouldn’t have been improved by bid-design, since the whole problem with NYC’s gas and steam networks is that they’re (1) undocumented, (2) critical infrastructure that can’t be disrupted, and (3) regularly responsible for mass casualty events when the city doesn’t gingerly fix them via independent projects. (1), importantly, means that the city doesn’t even know who else to bring to the table until they break ground and see what’s below the streets.
The area they chose to highlight typifies this: that part of the East Side uses the steam network for hospital disinfection, and had a massive, deadly, costly stream explosion within living memory[1].
The city absolutely does need better contracting processes. But the parks, MTA, public housing, schools, etc. are all better examples than the one they chose.
IMHO, all governments create a map of their infrasructure and require utilities to update it with as built information within 1 week of the work (if the work takes more than a week they must update weekly!). They should also be putting "as-planed" information in to this. When someone calls the "one call" they need to update existing infrastructure as found. And within 15 years they need to update the entire database.
Once the database is created (that is you call the one-call number a week in advance for your proposed project) contractors who encounter anything else are justified in cutting the pipes/wires since they are not used. When two projects are planned in the same area the designers are required to contact each other and make plans - they are encouraged to work together to save money (dig one hole...)
I realize finding something in the ground is hard. There needs to be a reasonable amount of tolerance for measurement errors and the earth moving (half a meter?). However that the above is hard isn't an excuse to not do it.
I love this sort of nitty gritty article with good details. That said it would be more convincing if the writer followed the maxim of Chesterton’s Fence: if design-build is a better process than design-bid-build, why was the latter law created in the first place? It is almost certain that something went wrong when design and build were bundled.
They are making a claim that design-build is better, but when you look at the evidence it doesn't pan out any better. Design-build means contractors design something expensive (contracts are often cost plus some profit margin so the higher they can make the costs the more profit they get - if it is a fixed price contract they will look for places where they can build to the letter of the contract but obviously fail to meet the intent, then charge a lot for the change order)
Someone should really do a study to compare private infrastructure works vs public ones.
A local Hofer (=Aldi) here can repave a whole parking lot and the access road in basically a weekend, while the same thing (parking lot) for a local government office can take a year or more, at approximately the same size.
Ten years ago, my city decided to repave a stretch of a local street. The contract stipulated that work must begin in April and must be concluded the same year, and the city awarded it to the lowest qualified bidder, a local contractor.
The contractor crews showed up in April, closed the road with detour signs, tore up and removed the previous pavement, and left. All summer and fall a third of the city choked through a residential detour around a road project nobody was working on.
With their deadline so far away, the the contractor was free to chase lucrative summer work elsewhere and returned only in late November to meet their contractual obligation to the city. They hurriedly poured the concrete and left it to cure in freezing winter temps, undermining a good cure and ensuring it'll need to be redone decades sooner than would be otherwise necessary.
For all the sub optimal contract writing, construction work, and traffic inconvenience, there was no news story, no outrage, and no politicians lost their jobs. People are too busy to punish incompetence if things start to work _eventually_, so the incompetent can keep calm and carry on.
These were private companies doing the work. The article argues that the problem was that the private company who is doing the construction is on a cost-plus contract and is different from the private company who designed the project, so the construction company has no ownership of the problems and no incentive to get it done.
As far as private infrastructure, I don't see how that would make much of a difference here, other than that a private company would probably have a harder time with permits to dig up the street on and off for 8 years.
There have been studies. In the public transit realm, there was a comparison of the Vancouver Canada Line that was built for the Olympics (an elevated train/subway to the airport) and the Eglinton Crosstown in Toronto (mixed underground surface light rail).
The TL;DR is that the Vancouver line was mostly on time, on budget, and is working well, while the Eglinton line is massively over-budget, still not ready (should have opened in 2020) with an "indeterminate opening date".
The big difference between the two? Vancouver's doled out ONE contract to design, build, and operate the line. It was up to the one company to decide how and where to contract out or subdivide, only being held to certain conditions with reasonable flexibility for unexpected issues. Toronto had a (notoriously bureaucratic provincial government organization called Metrolinx) subdivide a bunch of contracts and essentially act as a project manager (of which a lot was also contracted out) with government-level accountability. The results were all over the place. Tracks were installed with slightly bad gauges, signalling software was bought and didn't have interoperability with other components, substandard construction was used, some contractors were probably hired for political reasons, etc.
There's plenty of studies from all over the world that compare cost differences for infrastructure between countries. The French are actually really good at it - they tend to spend a fraction the cost of infrastructure compared to England. https://www.bcg.com/united-kingdom/centre-for-growth/insight...
Do you mean the time it takes to actually do the paving is a weekend? Or the process of going from "I want this repaved" to getting it completely done is too long?
If con ed wasn’t a private org this wouldn’t be an issue. The people who live here gain absolutely nothing from their acting as a profit seeking middleman: indeed all we get is a totally unaccountable actor who can hide surprises all over one of the most densely populated places on earth.
NYC's government is entirely comprised of profit-seeking middlemen. Every mid- to high-level politician gets rich in office. That happens for a reason.
That's just another example why we can't remain urbanized in the modern era. In the past there was no choice, now we can choose and meanwhile tech evolution have pushed the needs of so much infra that being dense instead of costing LESS than being spread it cost more.
Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) and while single family homes can evolve (a single owner, a single family to relocate for rebuilding when (not if) needed, a bit of ground to actually work around without creating traffic nightmares and so on) big condos, towers etc practically can't.
It's time to recalculate the narrative "being dense cost less". The reality is that cost much more and can only substantially evolve being totally rebuild, so practically can't substantially evolve. Big dense cities are needed only for finance capitalism, but we can't sustain them, nor humanly, nor technically nor environmentally.
Even though things are more complex in large cities it still generates so much money that it is cheaper per capita then building in low density neighbourhood.
> Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs)
[+] [-] woodruffw|1 year ago|reply
The area they chose to highlight typifies this: that part of the East Side uses the steam network for hospital disinfection, and had a massive, deadly, costly stream explosion within living memory[1].
The city absolutely does need better contracting processes. But the parks, MTA, public housing, schools, etc. are all better examples than the one they chose.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_York_City_steam_explo...
[+] [-] flerchin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alexpotato|1 year ago|reply
As a sibling poster mentioned, undocumented infra is horrible.
I wrote a thread on how to improve documentation in general if people are interested:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224309861304938496.html
It's from the perspective of FinTech SRE but I tried to make it general for folks in other industries.
[+] [-] maxwell|1 year ago|reply
Alas, we stopped founding new cities over a hundred years ago in the U.S.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Americas...
[+] [-] bluGill|1 year ago|reply
IMHO, all governments create a map of their infrasructure and require utilities to update it with as built information within 1 week of the work (if the work takes more than a week they must update weekly!). They should also be putting "as-planed" information in to this. When someone calls the "one call" they need to update existing infrastructure as found. And within 15 years they need to update the entire database.
Once the database is created (that is you call the one-call number a week in advance for your proposed project) contractors who encounter anything else are justified in cutting the pipes/wires since they are not used. When two projects are planned in the same area the designers are required to contact each other and make plans - they are encouraged to work together to save money (dig one hole...)
I realize finding something in the ground is hard. There needs to be a reasonable amount of tolerance for measurement errors and the earth moving (half a meter?). However that the above is hard isn't an excuse to not do it.
[+] [-] arctics|1 year ago|reply
Why this box costs $4 million? Can someone explain?
[+] [-] alephxyz|1 year ago|reply
https://abc7ny.com/public-restroom-nyc-bathroom-subway/12892...
[+] [-] op00to|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eduction|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bradleyjg|1 year ago|reply
This is a laudable goal but at the level we have now the cure is worse than the disease.
[+] [-] bluGill|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xnx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|1 year ago|reply
A local Hofer (=Aldi) here can repave a whole parking lot and the access road in basically a weekend, while the same thing (parking lot) for a local government office can take a year or more, at approximately the same size.
[+] [-] elevation|1 year ago|reply
The contractor crews showed up in April, closed the road with detour signs, tore up and removed the previous pavement, and left. All summer and fall a third of the city choked through a residential detour around a road project nobody was working on.
With their deadline so far away, the the contractor was free to chase lucrative summer work elsewhere and returned only in late November to meet their contractual obligation to the city. They hurriedly poured the concrete and left it to cure in freezing winter temps, undermining a good cure and ensuring it'll need to be redone decades sooner than would be otherwise necessary.
For all the sub optimal contract writing, construction work, and traffic inconvenience, there was no news story, no outrage, and no politicians lost their jobs. People are too busy to punish incompetence if things start to work _eventually_, so the incompetent can keep calm and carry on.
[+] [-] D13Fd|1 year ago|reply
As far as private infrastructure, I don't see how that would make much of a difference here, other than that a private company would probably have a harder time with permits to dig up the street on and off for 8 years.
[+] [-] hylaride|1 year ago|reply
The TL;DR is that the Vancouver line was mostly on time, on budget, and is working well, while the Eglinton line is massively over-budget, still not ready (should have opened in 2020) with an "indeterminate opening date".
The big difference between the two? Vancouver's doled out ONE contract to design, build, and operate the line. It was up to the one company to decide how and where to contract out or subdivide, only being held to certain conditions with reasonable flexibility for unexpected issues. Toronto had a (notoriously bureaucratic provincial government organization called Metrolinx) subdivide a bunch of contracts and essentially act as a project manager (of which a lot was also contracted out) with government-level accountability. The results were all over the place. Tracks were installed with slightly bad gauges, signalling software was bought and didn't have interoperability with other components, substandard construction was used, some contractors were probably hired for political reasons, etc.
There's plenty of studies from all over the world that compare cost differences for infrastructure between countries. The French are actually really good at it - they tend to spend a fraction the cost of infrastructure compared to England. https://www.bcg.com/united-kingdom/centre-for-growth/insight...
[+] [-] samcat116|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jefftk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ixtli|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pclmulqdq|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bmmayer1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kkfx|1 year ago|reply
Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs) and while single family homes can evolve (a single owner, a single family to relocate for rebuilding when (not if) needed, a bit of ground to actually work around without creating traffic nightmares and so on) big condos, towers etc practically can't.
It's time to recalculate the narrative "being dense cost less". The reality is that cost much more and can only substantially evolve being totally rebuild, so practically can't substantially evolve. Big dense cities are needed only for finance capitalism, but we can't sustain them, nor humanly, nor technically nor environmentally.
[+] [-] D13Fd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] _visgean|1 year ago|reply
> Nowadays a MODERN a big apartments complex cost more than an equivalent of single families homes per unit (HVAC, seismic, fire-safety, ... costs)
Isnt that because of the price of land?
[+] [-] quesera|1 year ago|reply
Can you link to a different explanation?