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I guess my takeaway from this is if you're a government building some sort of asset you're going to transfer to the private sector, overengineer it. Nobody is

I guess my takeaway from this is if you're a government building some sort of asset you're going to transfer to the private sector, overengineer it. Nobody is ever going to do maintenance, so your thing essentially has to last forever. Imagine that they made the hooks so they only lasted for 10 years -- we'd have 10 times as many billion-dollar fires. But some engineer in 1918 said "you know, let's make it a little bit bigger, it's only a few cents extra" and they probably saved some lives in the process. (Yes, it failed, but you have to admit that it had a pretty good run! 97 years is not bad for a moving part!)

benjaminjackman 6y ago
Paradoxically though if it failed every 1 year then pretty soon maintenance would have to be performed every few months or days or else there would be so many failures it would be really hard to ignore.
- ShinTakuya 6y ago
  This is an interesting argument. Maybe 10 years as a lifespan would be better than 100 years since it'd force checks every year. With the 100 year lifespan, people will always assume it can be done next year instead of this year.
  - tornato7 6y ago
    Reminds me of Let's Encrypt issuing 90 day certs instead of 1+ year so that you're forced to find a better automated solution and not have a panic when your cert expires in 5 years
    - jrockway 6y ago
      I wonder whether or not that's the global maximum. I still occasionally run into sites that never figured out how to use Let's Encrypt, so they don't encrypt at all. I personally achieved completely automatic renewals (https://jrock.us/posts/rotating-envoy-certs/ https://jrock.us/posts/rotating-envoy-certs/) but it involved some work. (It also works so well that I don't even believe it. I have to go manually check from time to time because my monitoring never shows me any errors, and there are so many moving parts that I am continually amazed that everything works perfectly.) Other people just aren't willing to do that. They like their nginx/Apache sitting on a lonely Linux box that they ssh into once every 5 years. The cost of changing any of that software is high, and they don't have a good system for running new software, like Certbot. We definitely didn't fix that.
- 20after4 6y ago
  Chaos monkey to the rescue.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  Then they would say "this is annoying, let's make it to last long" which brings us to now...
gok 6y ago
The government didn't build this asset and transfer it. Great Western Power Company built it, which PG&E bought from a New York holding company in 1930.
joe_the_user 6y ago
"over-engineering" something can't make it last forever, can't prevent it from eventually wearing out. If that's the plan, it just postpones the day when people suffer. As you say, these things were engineered for the long haul but the people harmed in Santa Rosa fire that the collapse of a pylon caused probably aren't impressed by shear lifetime. Father: Son, some day, all of this will be yours. And since we don't expect to do maintenance, some other day, it will explode and kill you or your grandchildren.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  So what's the right answer then? If you build something to last 100 years, you leave little incentives for maintenance and all but guarantee a catastrophic failure a century from now. If you build something to last 10 weeks, you're creating a lot of waste - wasted labor, money, energy and natural resources, involved in producing and shipping replacement parts, as well as performing the maintenance job. You're also making everything that depends on your construction more fragile - the system is always a couple weeks from catastrophic failure, so it won't survive a localized crisis - like a natural disaster, pandemic, economic problems, maintenance company going bankrupt, etc. So what's the correct trade-off function[0] here? How can we minimize waste and maximize reliability, while ensuring necessary maintenance happens on time? -- [0] - f: specifics of project -> trade-off
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    Are we talking about k8s? I jest. Regardless, it seems ‘waste’ is what is needed to drive the economy. Wasted labor is still people employed, getting a paycheck, and participating in the economy. I don’t know if we want to eliminate waste without UBI or some other social safety net. If we were to eliminate waste, less people would have jobs.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > If we were to eliminate waste, less people would have jobs. ... or more people would be available to take on work that's more needed and not currently being done. Otherwise, why have machines and technology, if they all primarily automate tasks your fellow laborers could be doing? I think that work which exist only to provide jobs is a waste at societal level. But it's also a waste at company level - why would you make your product labor-intensive to maintain, where you could make it robust instead? In reality, the trick is to ensure you're not the one paying for maintenance - and then you save money by making more fragile products.
imtringued 6y ago
I feel like an easy solution to this could have been an additional safety wire. The safety wire will catch the insulator and thereby give maintenance crew a few days to arrive before the tower fails for good. There is also a general maintenance problem that could be solved by installing inspection cameras directly onto every tower. Those cameras may have to be replaced more frequently than the actual tower components but I'm sure they would not only save on inspection costs but also allow them to respond to falling infrastructure much faster. Of course PG&E has a cultural problem, not a technical problem. So I doubt they would do this at all.
- m-ee 6y ago
  I also found it bizarre that your average go-kart track (not to mention aviation) has the presence of mind to safety wire everything but a multi billion dollar utility company didn't
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    A century ago, when it was designed, they've probably correctly assumed there's no way a safety line, even unloaded, will survive longer than a hook in there. The hook was a robust solution that could easily last a decade or two. I doubt people back then were expecting this to be left unmaintained for 97 years.
antihero 6y ago
So the government has to spend more, look more inefficient, and then when a private corporation and runs it dangerously at minimum cost, it plays right into the "private companies are more efficient, we should privatise more" lobby.
c3534l 6y ago
If they only lasted 10 years, it would have been replaced with something easier to service by now.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
>" your thing essentially has to last forever" Wtf is the role of the private sector then? What are they contributing?

benjaminjackman 6y ago

Paradoxically though if it failed every 1 year then pretty soon maintenance would have to be performed every few months or days or else there would be so many failures it would be really hard to ignore.

ShinTakuya 6y ago
This is an interesting argument. Maybe 10 years as a lifespan would be better than 100 years since it'd force checks every year. With the 100 year lifespan, people will always assume it can be done next year instead of this year.
- tornato7 6y ago
  Reminds me of Let's Encrypt issuing 90 day certs instead of 1+ year so that you're forced to find a better automated solution and not have a panic when your cert expires in 5 years
  - jrockway 6y ago
    I wonder whether or not that's the global maximum. I still occasionally run into sites that never figured out how to use Let's Encrypt, so they don't encrypt at all. I personally achieved completely automatic renewals (https://jrock.us/posts/rotating-envoy-certs/ https://jrock.us/posts/rotating-envoy-certs/) but it involved some work. (It also works so well that I don't even believe it. I have to go manually check from time to time because my monitoring never shows me any errors, and there are so many moving parts that I am continually amazed that everything works perfectly.) Other people just aren't willing to do that. They like their nginx/Apache sitting on a lonely Linux box that they ssh into once every 5 years. The cost of changing any of that software is high, and they don't have a good system for running new software, like Certbot. We definitely didn't fix that.
20after4 6y ago
Chaos monkey to the rescue.
noisy_boy 6y ago
Then they would say "this is annoying, let's make it to last long" which brings us to now...

gok 6y ago

The government didn't build this asset and transfer it. Great Western Power Company built it, which PG&E bought from a New York holding company in 1930.

joe_the_user 6y ago

"over-engineering" something can't make it last forever, can't prevent it from eventually wearing out. If that's the plan, it just postpones the day when people suffer. As you say, these things were engineered for the long haul but the people harmed in Santa Rosa fire that the collapse of a pylon caused probably aren't impressed by shear lifetime. Father: Son, some day, all of this will be yours. And since we don't expect to do maintenance, some other day, it will explode and kill you or your grandchildren.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
So what's the right answer then? If you build something to last 100 years, you leave little incentives for maintenance and all but guarantee a catastrophic failure a century from now. If you build something to last 10 weeks, you're creating a lot of waste - wasted labor, money, energy and natural resources, involved in producing and shipping replacement parts, as well as performing the maintenance job. You're also making everything that depends on your construction more fragile - the system is always a couple weeks from catastrophic failure, so it won't survive a localized crisis - like a natural disaster, pandemic, economic problems, maintenance company going bankrupt, etc. So what's the correct trade-off function[0] here? How can we minimize waste and maximize reliability, while ensuring necessary maintenance happens on time? -- [0] - f: specifics of project -> trade-off
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  Are we talking about k8s? I jest. Regardless, it seems ‘waste’ is what is needed to drive the economy. Wasted labor is still people employed, getting a paycheck, and participating in the economy. I don’t know if we want to eliminate waste without UBI or some other social safety net. If we were to eliminate waste, less people would have jobs.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > If we were to eliminate waste, less people would have jobs. ... or more people would be available to take on work that's more needed and not currently being done. Otherwise, why have machines and technology, if they all primarily automate tasks your fellow laborers could be doing? I think that work which exist only to provide jobs is a waste at societal level. But it's also a waste at company level - why would you make your product labor-intensive to maintain, where you could make it robust instead? In reality, the trick is to ensure you're not the one paying for maintenance - and then you save money by making more fragile products.

imtringued 6y ago

I feel like an easy solution to this could have been an additional safety wire. The safety wire will catch the insulator and thereby give maintenance crew a few days to arrive before the tower fails for good. There is also a general maintenance problem that could be solved by installing inspection cameras directly onto every tower. Those cameras may have to be replaced more frequently than the actual tower components but I'm sure they would not only save on inspection costs but also allow them to respond to falling infrastructure much faster. Of course PG&E has a cultural problem, not a technical problem. So I doubt they would do this at all.

m-ee 6y ago
I also found it bizarre that your average go-kart track (not to mention aviation) has the presence of mind to safety wire everything but a multi billion dollar utility company didn't
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  A century ago, when it was designed, they've probably correctly assumed there's no way a safety line, even unloaded, will survive longer than a hook in there. The hook was a robust solution that could easily last a decade or two. I doubt people back then were expecting this to be left unmaintained for 97 years.

antihero 6y ago

So the government has to spend more, look more inefficient, and then when a private corporation and runs it dangerously at minimum cost, it plays right into the "private companies are more efficient, we should privatise more" lobby.

c3534l 6y ago

If they only lasted 10 years, it would have been replaced with something easier to service by now.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

>" your thing essentially has to last forever" Wtf is the role of the private sector then? What are they contributing?