When Boston’s Big Dig project was getting started, in the late 1980s, an MIT professor of civil engineering and I went over to see the guy in charge. We showed him a bunch of computer software that we’d built and pitched him on the idea of using computers to track the flow of materials and the state of the work, much as is done in any modern factory. He said “I’m not interested in anything that might save money. This is a cost-plus project and the more we spend, the more profit we make. If we build this new highway using the same technology employed by the Romans, that’s fine with me.”
Predictably, the project cost a lot more than planned, the guy we talked to made a lot more profit than budgeted, and the schedule slipped. What wasn’t predicted were the quality problems that have come to obsess Boston in recent weeks, after the death of Milena Del Valle.
What would the French have done? (WWtFhD) The contract would not have been to build the road. The contract would have been to build the road and maintain it for 20 years, thus giving the contractor an incentive to maintain high quality.
[Note that this is a separate practice from the French allowing private companies to build, maintain, and operate private toll roads.]
About ten years ago, near Chinatown, Big Dig management put a billboard that read “Rome wasn’t built in one day. If it was, we would have hired their contractors.”
They should have.
I doubt that a contract to maintain it for 20 years would have made a difference. The managers know they’re not going to be around in 20 years. And the company would just ask for a bailout, threatening bankruptcy, if the costs ever got too high, and the government would cave in.
I used those autoroutes a moderate amount when our family lived in Geneva in the 1990s. While they’re in great condition and rarely crowded, they’re prohibitively expensive, and leave the poorer francais relegated to the backroads during the summer holiday period. However, articles I’ve read indicate that the companies involved in their construction received a fair profit margin, rather than the apparent overpayment to many contractors in the Big Dig for shoddy work.
It’s not just le pain and la patisserie which are better en France!