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I agree with your general point, but it's worth mentioning 2 points on the Empire State Building example: 1) Depending on where you draw the line for starting t
by dougweltman 7y ago
I agree with your general point, but it's worth mentioning 2 points on the Empire State Building example:
1) Depending on where you draw the line for starting the ESB, it was 16 months.
2) Look at building sites in NYC today (which can still build skyscrapers effectively), and compare them with pictures from the 30s. MUCH better health and safety, both for workers and nearby pedestrians. At least 5, and as many as 14, people died during construction.
Some of the reasons things take longer today are actually good!
- thrower123 7y agoFourteen people dying to lay ten and a quarter million bricks and thousands of tons of steel is not much of a butcher's bill. I'd bet that more people would die in car accidents getting to the work site over the extended construction time today.
- admax88q 7y agoEven if that were true, perhaps the answer is to reduce vehicle deaths rather than increase construction deaths. Just so you can get your bridge sooner.
- lazyjones 7y agoIs the situation actually much better today? > 21% / 991 of 4693 Work Deaths In The US Were In Construction (2016) http://www.imectechnologies.com/2018/07/30/construction-safety-21-of-all-work-deaths-in-the-us-were-in-construction/* http://www.imectechnologies.com/2018/07/30/construction-safe...
- mlyle 7y agoYes. Tens of thousands of people died per year in construction and industrial deaths in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s, with a much smaller population. Yes, construction is still disproportionately risky, but... Two deaths to build 1 WTC, vs 60 deaths to build the Twin Towers (4x the square footage), vs 5-14 deaths to build the Empire State Building (80% the square footage). Most ordinary skyscrapers have zero, which wasn't the case 100 years ago.
- BurningFrog 7y agoI seriously doubt any substantial part of the slowdowns are caused by improved worker safety. Yes there is a correlation between those two trends, but as we all know, that doesn't prove causation. We have enormously better technology today than in the 30s, and should be able to put of a skyscraper in 1/4 of the time. I understand that's more or less what China does.
- imgabe 7y agoBut sometimes China has things like this happen: https://failedarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/22s5AXG-1500x750.png https://failedarchitecture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/22...