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I always wonder how seriously significant and BASIC errors such as this happen... My experience suggests it's likely because there's too much power at senior l

I always wonder how seriously significant and BASIC errors such as this happen... My experience suggests it's likely because there's too much power at senior levels and lack of ownership at lower ones. Like some senior person says "tunnel needs to be 7 meters wide", everyone vehemently nods in rote agreement, and no one double checks that should actually be 8 meters until some intern discovers the mistake while preparing info for a case study deck. Any thoughts?

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Eager managers (or lead engineers) that circumvent the usual “boring” vetting steps. Sadly, those of us in software, are quite familiar with these types of blunders. Fortunately, software is “soft,” so we can, quite often, code our way out of these messes. Hardware, on the other hand, is “hard,” so it isn’t so easy to extricate ourselves. I worked for hardware companies, for most of my career, and experienced the mind-numbing “measure twice, cut once” methodology that they use. Software folks seldom have patience for that, and, to be fair, the process can introduce deadly rigidity to a software project (which was why I was fighting a constant hopeless battle for flexibility). So I guess another possibility is, is that someone promoted a software architect into a position of influence in the project.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
I'm sure when they were all private railroads, every company had a consistent standard for width of tunnel. Unify all those independently designed systems together, lose some important documentation along the way, and you're left with something where you can't simply look up important technical constraints.
ahazred8ta 4y ago
In 2013, Spain had to lengthen their new model of S-80 submarines by 10 meters, because a spreadsheet error made them 100 tons overweight.
TuringTest 4y ago
That may happen, but it's not the case here. The project was written using modern standard sizes, as required by law; but knowing that the tunnels are ancient, they also mandated the provider to make a field study to figure out the real tunnel minimum sizes, and build the trains according to its result. The scandal happened when this caused a delay in the initial estimated dates, and politicians found out that they wouldn't be able to open the train lines in time for this year's elections.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

Eager managers (or lead engineers) that circumvent the usual “boring” vetting steps. Sadly, those of us in software, are quite familiar with these types of blunders. Fortunately, software is “soft,” so we can, quite often, code our way out of these messes. Hardware, on the other hand, is “hard,” so it isn’t so easy to extricate ourselves. I worked for hardware companies, for most of my career, and experienced the mind-numbing “measure twice, cut once” methodology that they use. Software folks seldom have patience for that, and, to be fair, the process can introduce deadly rigidity to a software project (which was why I was fighting a constant hopeless battle for flexibility). So I guess another possibility is, is that someone promoted a software architect into a position of influence in the project.

IIAOPSW 4y ago

I'm sure when they were all private railroads, every company had a consistent standard for width of tunnel. Unify all those independently designed systems together, lose some important documentation along the way, and you're left with something where you can't simply look up important technical constraints.

ahazred8ta 4y ago

In 2013, Spain had to lengthen their new model of S-80 submarines by 10 meters, because a spreadsheet error made them 100 tons overweight.

TuringTest 4y ago

That may happen, but it's not the case here. The project was written using modern standard sizes, as required by law; but knowing that the tunnels are ancient, they also mandated the provider to make a field study to figure out the real tunnel minimum sizes, and build the trains according to its result. The scandal happened when this caused a delay in the initial estimated dates, and politicians found out that they wouldn't be able to open the train lines in time for this year's elections.