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> The company declined to answer a series of written questions or to make a statement. Clearly this is because they're being sued, and they want to minimize th

> The company declined to answer a series of written questions or to make a statement. Clearly this is because they're being sued, and they want to minimize their losses. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead -- no legal liability, just a thorough public review that everyone could read and learn from. We see this in other fields, like aviation; the NTSB investigates and publishes their finding of facts. The field learns from the mistakes, and as a result it's incredibly safe. (Even if you account for random chance, like MH370 or the whole 787MAX debacle, we're still doing better than we were 10 years ago.) Instead we just keep making the same mistakes again and again. Everyone pretty much expects to get on a plane and arrive at their destination alive. Everyone also expects their megaproject to be delayed and be finished over budget. When are we going to fix this?

csdreamer7 6y ago
Wouldn't that also be the responsibility of the NTSB? NTSB means National Transportation Safety Board. Doesn't the state have their own equivalent that can publish facts as well?
Simulacra 6y ago
When we get politicians who care more about government responsibility than re-election
netcan 6y ago
>Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead. I think this way of thinking is crucial. Ultimately, these projects start to take this shape at conception... long before the failures are realized. The heads-i-win-tails-you lose games. The liability avoidance. The negotiation of guilt for the expected failures down the road. It's a similar game in the corporate world, like with enterprise software. Everyone knows that an ERP project will blow the budget and timeline. Lots of lawyerly hours are spent creating liability frameworks for it. The result is always ambiguous, pinning failures on specification failures, changing requirements or whatnot. Systems respond to incentives in many ways, but institutional (government, commercial, NGO, charity...) response to liability is rarely a positive sum game. Not saying I have the answers, just that the obvious ones have been tried and failed. This isn't a marginal issue. As it stands now, there is are huge categories if things we need and can't have... because the systems for getting them are horribly ineffective. If trains cost 5X what they could cost, we effectively can't have new public transport systems. That's not sustainable.
bleepblorp 6y ago
It's really unfortunate that the transportation disaster investigation model hasn't, uh, taken off in other sectors where the margin of error isn't so small that there's no alternative. Even in aviation, however, independent investigations by government (e.g. the NTSB) do not extinguish civil or criminal liability. Incident investigations are inadmissible in court, but civil suits and/or criminal prosecutions can be, and are, conducted as parallel processes.
thomasedwards 6y ago
> Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead. This is how BAA built Heathrow Terminal 5. They took on all risk and just dealt with each problem as they came up: https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2005/04/project-management-at-heathrow-terminal-5/ https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2005/04/project-management...
- arethuza 6y ago
  Didn't they have a disastrous opening day for Terminal 5 because of mistakes that looked like poor project management? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7322453.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7322453.stm
  - xhedley 6y ago
    BA British Airways had a bad go live day for Terminal 5 because of parking assignment, baggage handlers having trouble logging onto the system, other staff not having maps, delays in getting staff through security and so on. That’s bad change management from the airline BA. The article was about BAA ( British Airports Authority originally) building the physical terminal building with a roof and ceilings and power and networks. Different organisation and set of project managers.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      Ah good point - my mistake. Still shows that public memory of projects which go well in one area can be effected when someone else screws up. Not that this would every happen in software projects.... ;-)
  - SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
    It was bad, but at least it wasn't Berlin Brandenburg.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I read a paper that tried to answer why tunnels cost more in New Zealand/Australia/US and Britain. Part of the answer was labor is a much large part of the cost than one would assume. And second those countries try to push 100% of the risk onto the contractors. One could haplessly think that's free but it's not. Smaller cheaper contractors won't bid[1]. And the largest contractors pad their bids so they will still make money even if everything goes wrong. [1] If you take projects with a 10% chance of bankrupting you, you'll be out of business in no time.
irrational 6y ago
But isn’t every mega project different? Do they all have problems in the same ways? That seems different than airplanes. There are different models of planes, but overall they seem a lot more similar than different so that my findings are probably applicable to any other plane.
dap 6y ago
Is aviation actually an example of what you’re describing? Airlines do have legal liability in the event of crashes and it’s the NTSB that investigates.
Hokusai 6y ago
>Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead. I see that attitude working with individuals. Most people takes their responsibilities seriously. But for corporations it would never work. Corporations would do literally nothing and take the money if there were no consequences. Even when all the employees are good caring people, the corporation incentive is to maximize profit. Corporations are less than the sum of its parts when it comes to morality.
- mjevans 6y ago
  The consequence is that this record is on file, and arguably could be used to disqualify a corporate entity from future projects. Screwing up big enough would actually be a "corporate death sentence".
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    The rating agencies gave AAA rating to a ton of junk mortgage-based securities before 2008, largely contributing to a global financial crisis. This is literally the biggest screwup imaginable in their area of business. And yet, all of them are still doing fine. How is that possible is really beyond me.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      Because the rating agency is paid by the paperholder. Even worse, those rating agencies must, by law, be used by those paperholders. So it's a massive conflict of interest, though little different than companies paying the big accounting agencies that are auditing them. But it gets much, much worse ... If a board member of a large company or government agency tries to independently hire an auditor for a review of said company, the auditor will refuse - because they will not be hired by the company for future work, and also other companies or agencies. And the 1,000 or so US-listed Chinese companies to date have not been required to show any books to the SEC, let alone the "real" set of books. All should be delisted, and the CALPERS CFO, a CCP member, should be replaced. (The rabbit hole here goes very deep, as the $2 trillion Belt and Road appears to be secretly funded by US exchange listings and unpaid US bonds.)

csdreamer7 6y ago

Wouldn't that also be the responsibility of the NTSB? NTSB means National Transportation Safety Board. Doesn't the state have their own equivalent that can publish facts as well?

Simulacra 6y ago

When we get politicians who care more about government responsibility than re-election

netcan 6y ago

>Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead. I think this way of thinking is crucial. Ultimately, these projects start to take this shape at conception... long before the failures are realized. The heads-i-win-tails-you lose games. The liability avoidance. The negotiation of guilt for the expected failures down the road. It's a similar game in the corporate world, like with enterprise software. Everyone knows that an ERP project will blow the budget and timeline. Lots of lawyerly hours are spent creating liability frameworks for it. The result is always ambiguous, pinning failures on specification failures, changing requirements or whatnot. Systems respond to incentives in many ways, but institutional (government, commercial, NGO, charity...) response to liability is rarely a positive sum game. Not saying I have the answers, just that the obvious ones have been tried and failed. This isn't a marginal issue. As it stands now, there is are huge categories if things we need and can't have... because the systems for getting them are horribly ineffective. If trains cost 5X what they could cost, we effectively can't have new public transport systems. That's not sustainable.

bleepblorp 6y ago

It's really unfortunate that the transportation disaster investigation model hasn't, uh, taken off in other sectors where the margin of error isn't so small that there's no alternative. Even in aviation, however, independent investigations by government (e.g. the NTSB) do not extinguish civil or criminal liability. Incident investigations are inadmissible in court, but civil suits and/or criminal prosecutions can be, and are, conducted as parallel processes.

thomasedwards 6y ago

> Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead. This is how BAA built Heathrow Terminal 5. They took on all risk and just dealt with each problem as they came up: https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2005/04/project-management-at-heathrow-terminal-5/ https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2005/04/project-management...

arethuza 6y ago
Didn't they have a disastrous opening day for Terminal 5 because of mistakes that looked like poor project management? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7322453.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7322453.stm
- xhedley 6y ago
  BA British Airways had a bad go live day for Terminal 5 because of parking assignment, baggage handlers having trouble logging onto the system, other staff not having maps, delays in getting staff through security and so on. That’s bad change management from the airline BA. The article was about BAA ( British Airports Authority originally) building the physical terminal building with a roof and ceilings and power and networks. Different organisation and set of project managers.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Ah good point - my mistake. Still shows that public memory of projects which go well in one area can be effected when someone else screws up. Not that this would every happen in software projects.... ;-)
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
  It was bad, but at least it wasn't Berlin Brandenburg.
Gibbon1 6y ago
I read a paper that tried to answer why tunnels cost more in New Zealand/Australia/US and Britain. Part of the answer was labor is a much large part of the cost than one would assume. And second those countries try to push 100% of the risk onto the contractors. One could haplessly think that's free but it's not. Smaller cheaper contractors won't bid[1]. And the largest contractors pad their bids so they will still make money even if everything goes wrong. [1] If you take projects with a 10% chance of bankrupting you, you'll be out of business in no time.

irrational 6y ago

But isn’t every mega project different? Do they all have problems in the same ways? That seems different than airplanes. There are different models of planes, but overall they seem a lot more similar than different so that my findings are probably applicable to any other plane.

dap 6y ago

Is aviation actually an example of what you’re describing? Airlines do have legal liability in the event of crashes and it’s the NTSB that investigates.

Hokusai 6y ago

>Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we just said "that sucks" and required a full postmortem instead. I see that attitude working with individuals. Most people takes their responsibilities seriously. But for corporations it would never work. Corporations would do literally nothing and take the money if there were no consequences. Even when all the employees are good caring people, the corporation incentive is to maximize profit. Corporations are less than the sum of its parts when it comes to morality.

mjevans 6y ago
The consequence is that this record is on file, and arguably could be used to disqualify a corporate entity from future projects. Screwing up big enough would actually be a "corporate death sentence".
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  The rating agencies gave AAA rating to a ton of junk mortgage-based securities before 2008, largely contributing to a global financial crisis. This is literally the biggest screwup imaginable in their area of business. And yet, all of them are still doing fine. How is that possible is really beyond me.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Because the rating agency is paid by the paperholder. Even worse, those rating agencies must, by law, be used by those paperholders. So it's a massive conflict of interest, though little different than companies paying the big accounting agencies that are auditing them. But it gets much, much worse ... If a board member of a large company or government agency tries to independently hire an auditor for a review of said company, the auditor will refuse - because they will not be hired by the company for future work, and also other companies or agencies. And the 1,000 or so US-listed Chinese companies to date have not been required to show any books to the SEC, let alone the "real" set of books. All should be delisted, and the CALPERS CFO, a CCP member, should be replaced. (The rabbit hole here goes very deep, as the $2 trillion Belt and Road appears to be secretly funded by US exchange listings and unpaid US bonds.)