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I once chatted with the foreman of a skyscraper construction project who happened to always be standing out on the street near my office where I regularly got c

I once chatted with the foreman of a skyscraper construction project who happened to always be standing out on the street near my office where I regularly got coffee, and I got to ask him a bunch of questions about the process. It was a lot of "what's that guy up there doing with that giant temporary platform" and "why do they X" kind of stuff, but when I was asking about the crane that was eventually going to have to be doubled in height when the building got too tall, he blew me away with the precision and confidence about that progress. "That will get jumped up on Memorial Day" he said, and that was several months away. I asked him how he could be so certain, and he explained that they build one floor per week, and the various trades (concrete, framing, electrical, plumbing, finish) each worked on one floor at a time in a pipelined fashion. So while concrete is working on the 19th floor, framing is working on 18, plumbing on 17, etc. When I asked what happens if one of those trades doesn't finish within their week, he looked at me like I was absolutely insane. "That doesn't happen. It can't. They have a week." Sure enough, the crane got taller on Memorial Day. After hearing that explanation it was fascinating to watch the progress and confirm that every tuesday, they'd start pouring concrete on the next floor up. Coming from a software perspective, I thought this was pretty impressive. When was the last time anyone told you something was going to take a week and it actually took a week? :D BTW, to answer a question about the crane, there are regulations limiting the crane to a specific height which change once the building gets tall enough to support having the crane bolted to the side of it.

Panzer04 4y ago
It makes sense when you consider each floor is essentially identical. I imagine skyscrapers and the like should be pretty predictable once the foundation is set up - it's just rinse-repeat for the next hundred floors (mostly). You don't have to deal with any preexisting limitations either, way up in the sky (unlike ground infrastructure, which has to deal with rights of ways, underground services, etc).
- rwmj 4y ago
  A better software analogy would be "how long will it take to deploy the next Kubernetes cluster?" which can be fairly accurately predicted if you know the number of nodes etc. and how long it took to deploy previous clusters.
- philwelch 4y ago
  Depends on the skyscraper. Lots of them taper or otherwise vary as they go up, so each floor is subtly different.
  - conductr 4y ago
    Different measurement, same process. It almost doesn’t matter how much minor fluctuations there are, they basically know they will need X plumbers and Y electricians and how to space them out. Given that they can adjust weekly as needed for these minor fluctuations.
swader999 4y ago
I can say how long my software compile or build time takes fairly accurately. That's the better analogy to use with construction. The rest of the software project is design work, I'm moving walls around, adding more load bearing, and so on.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 4y ago
  I’m surprised how often people are wrong about simple things like this. If a build takes five minutes, that’s the absolute least amount of time before you’ll have a binary. The CI tool could have a queuing glitch. You could have a flaky test, you could be failing to isolate multiple integration test runs properly and one could ruin the other. But that’s just the simple stuff, the stuff without humans. Most of the time if something will take five minutes, we often try to find something to do that will take a few minutes. Well guess what, we always underestimate how long things will take, ususally by a factor of two. So a five minute build can take ten minutes for you to notice if it succeeded. And if it failed thirty seconds in, you might still be looking at fifteen to twenty minutes to the end of the second build (the more failures the lower the likelihood someone will multitask, but for some they only watch the third try closely). This doubling and tripling is why it’s more important than you might expect for compile and test times to be very fast. An extra minute can turn into three way too often.
- foolfoolz 4y ago
  the workers in trades in a construction project have plans. they have schematics that say do this here. to this exact dimension. using this exact type of connector. they don’t (usually) say which tools to use or how to do everything, it’s assumed you know compare this to a software team that has plans (design docs) for everything they want o build. they have schematics (tickets) that say do this here. to this exact interface. they don’t (usually) say which tools to use or how to do everything, it’s assumed you know i don’t think these scenarios should be that far apart. those people in the skyscraper aren’t moving walls. that would screw over the whole project. they have the output of more planning so they don’t have to. and it paid off during implementation
golemotron 4y ago
> Coming from a software perspective, I thought this was pretty impressive. When was the last time anyone told you something was going to take a week and it actually took a week? :D If you are asked to write the same exact piece of code (like each floor) 18 times you'd probably have no problem meeting schedule.
- dogcomplex 4y ago
  And, crucially, the entire project is preplanned. That preplanning is the software phase equivalent - the construction is running the code. (Or at least, the preplan is defining all the necessary function definitions and connecting them confidently, and construction is just writing each implementation.)
mikesurowiec 4y ago
If you're interested in learning more the term to search is "takt-time planning", specifically as it relates to lean construction methodology rather than manufacturing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takt_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takt_time
- azepoi 4y ago
  Knowing German I thought for sure this is the word I know from German. And it was but surprisingly through Japanese takuto taimu.
nonethewiser 4y ago
My impression is a week is far more time than they need.
- colineartheta 4y ago
  Have you ever worked on the construction of a skyscraper?
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    A Chinese construction company built a 10-story building in a day, and a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days. I am not sure what "union break" is in Chinese...I would brush up. You can say that we need experts, teams of consultants to issue reports at $1,000 per hour on disturbances to the local newt population or whatever, we need to pay off the bureaucrats in planning, we need to pay the unions and organized crime in NY...the reality is that someone has to pay this, and the US isn't efficient anymore. Layers of graft at every stage. China has just cut out the corruption, and they can sell the same goods at half the price, make double the profit...they just do it better.
    - junofan 4y ago
      Ok to be fair that’s called tofu building 豆腐工程 and it’s a different form of corruption.
      - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
        Buildings collapse in the US too. And it actually results in buildings get built. You think the US isn't corrupt: how many consultants are taking their piece? The contractors, planning bureaucrats, the environmental consultants, architects, lawyers...it is endemic. At least in China you only need to pay off a few people, in the US you need to pay tens of thousands of consultants whose have acquired this role of tax collector through collecting various bits of paper from corrupt institutions (thank god for legacy admissions, right?). No-one cares how sausage is made, they just want to know how it tastes. Chinese corruption gets things done. US corruption breeds more weakness, more waste, more corruption.
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
another classic in the "software dev suprised other people are good at their jobs"
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  Frankly, it's hard to believe they pay us for this shit, until you remember that we're often the only option.
01100011 4y ago
I've never been on anything that tight, but I'll say that the projects I've been on where we used Gantt charts and had a dedicated project manager got done with a lot more precision than anything managed by an agile process. Maybe it's just me, but having my reputation staked on my estimates with an easy to read chart of dependencies and deadlines helps me 'servo' my effort(i.e. work overtime) and come in closer to the estimate. I wouldn't suggest that for everyone, but some of us like that sort of pressure and the feeling that comes with nailing it. Then again, I don't have kids.
- lmm 4y ago
  Bruh stop being a bootlicker; even if you enjoy doing unpaid work, you're undermining your colleagues who probably don't. When the work takes longer than estimated, that's a problem with the estimate, not a reason you should be giving more hours of your life to rich owners.
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    > even if you enjoy doing unpaid work, you're undermining your colleagues who probably don't Busting my ass in my younger days to make "impossible" deadlines was far from unpaid work. It was a conscious tradeoff that paid off extremely well in cash and stock, and nobody cared about "undermining" their colleagues who had the exact same opportunities but chose not to chase them. I don't "enjoy doing unpaid work", I "enjoy impressing people who casually throw big bags of money at people who are useful to them."
- bfeynman 4y ago
  IIRC this falls into classic fallacy where teams set low goals so as to always exceed them. The better way is to have people estimate and bet money on delivery.
  - _0ffh 4y ago
    Maybe a bigger company could do it like some card games decide on who will choose the game: Make several teams "bid" on the contract, the one with the best bid gets it, but winning the game (e.g. getting bonuses) depends on if they can actually deliver on their bid.
LegitShady 4y ago
One thing to consider is that when you're building up into the air instead of digging into the ground, you have much fewer opportunities for unknowns to affect you.
umvi 4y ago
I can tell you with great precision how long it will take me to build software that has requirements as precise as a skyscraper's. The problem is that most of the time the software to be built has nebulous requirements
- acjacobson 4y ago
  And changing ones. I imagine once a skyscraper's plan is set it really doesn't change much at all.
2143 4y ago
This could be because construction (civil engineering?) is a fairly mature field that's been around for hundreds of years. Of course there's new materials and designs and everything but there are also established methodologies and standard practices. Add things generally go according to plan in Western countries so I'm not surprised. (I'm from a non-Western country where long term planning of anything is futile — too much entropy and chaos). Computers, software etc is a very young field in comparison. By the year 4723 things would hopefully be standardized (and possibly build themselves).
- wizofaus 4y ago
  While the maturity of the field is surely part of it, the fact remains that a typical piece of computer software almost certainly has a lot more unique complexity and functionality than a typical building. It's pretty rare a building is expected to provide the ability to do something that no other building has ever done before, yet we expect this sort of thing of software all the time. Nor is a building expected to perform complex logical and arithmetical operations while in use, or if it is (e.g. software controlling the elevators or climate control system), it's using more-or-less off-the-shelf componentry to do so.
  - jq-r 4y ago
    I would say that both you and the parent are right. Software engineering is both new, and non-standard. So we get worst of both worlds, on one hand there are no good truly standard practices, and on the other the technology is very complex and rapidly changing absolutely all the time. Knowing this, one could say that its a minor miracle anything gets shipped in this industry.
jen729w 4y ago
Similar story: I asked a friend, who ran public comms on a rail extension project, to see her schedule. Two Fridays away at 11:05 a concrete truck turns up and pours. At 13:10 something is laid by some specialist in the concrete. At 14:50 another thing happens. I asked her if she was joking and she looked at me like I was mad. Of course not. The concrete needs to be poured and then the truck goes somewhere else. When it hardens a thing has to happen and then the guy who checks the thing turns up and they’ve only got him for half a day and so on and so forth. My mate says that “if they built bridges like we built IT infrastructure a lot more people would die”.
- pif 4y ago
  Did you ask her what happens if the concrete truck gets stuck in an accident on the freeway?
  - wil421 4y ago
    They send another truck because of the first one didn’t make it in time the concrete company is going to have a fun day cleaning stuck concrete out of their truck. My father-in-law was in commercial construction for decades, now turned general contracting post 2008 recession, and he has binder and binders of contractor business cards, including a concrete section. I can assure you project managers would be frantically calling all concrete companies trying to find a replacement. And they will.
    - maratc 4y ago
      If it's a railway project they have likely booked several trucks already, doing several deliveries, so one of them having an accident is not likely to matter.
      - jen729w 4y ago
        Forgive me if I’m wrong — I have a sibling comment here and am not a construction PM — but no. This comment beautifully demonstrates the point: the disconnect between our industry and the physical world. There are not just concrete trucks just lined up down the road, waiting for a PM to say “okay we’ve got enough, you can stop now”. The amount of concrete is known. It is planned. The 3rd party concrete supplier is given an order well ahead of time. They plan their trucks and drivers. None of this is made up on the day. One of them having an accident matters. This is why IT projects are such a shambles. When we forget something — a change request, say — we just say “oh well, that’s a pity”. Some poor schmuck has a bad afternoon running around making it good and life goes on. We get away with it because it isn’t concrete in a truck.
pif 4y ago
Did you ask him if the design phase had proceeded so smoothly? Writing software is the equivalent of creating the blueprints; compiling is the equivalent of pouring concrete.
cainxinth 4y ago
I studied the financing aspect of large building construction in a law school class. It works in a similar fashion. The development money is doled out on a very structured basis, sometimes literally one floor at a time. There are numerous milestones and you have to stick to the schedule or the money stops.
nitbix 4y ago
> "That doesn't happen. It can't. They have a week." Maybe it didn't happen that time, or maybe it did and they remediated somehow (at higher cost), but I have a dataset that says it happens all the time. And that "it can't happen" attitude is part of why it actually happens- nobody is looking ahead at uncertainty.
splistud 4y ago
[dead]
niuzeta 4y ago
> That will get jumped up on Memorial Day" Totally off topic, but is this a normal usage of this phrase? I've never seen/read "get jumped up" used in this sense.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I think it's pretty normal construction jargon, yes. It's a bit unusual to laymen's ears, but the meaning is still pretty clear.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  Took me by surprise, but it makes perfect sense in context. I just assumed it was the cranebro vernacular.
mckravchyk 4y ago
To contrast that, in the last few days I have spent 14h that I never considered in the schedule to wrangle TypeScript issues and bugs (4 to be precise).

Panzer04 4y ago

It makes sense when you consider each floor is essentially identical. I imagine skyscrapers and the like should be pretty predictable once the foundation is set up - it's just rinse-repeat for the next hundred floors (mostly). You don't have to deal with any preexisting limitations either, way up in the sky (unlike ground infrastructure, which has to deal with rights of ways, underground services, etc).

rwmj 4y ago
A better software analogy would be "how long will it take to deploy the next Kubernetes cluster?" which can be fairly accurately predicted if you know the number of nodes etc. and how long it took to deploy previous clusters.
philwelch 4y ago
Depends on the skyscraper. Lots of them taper or otherwise vary as they go up, so each floor is subtly different.
- conductr 4y ago
  Different measurement, same process. It almost doesn’t matter how much minor fluctuations there are, they basically know they will need X plumbers and Y electricians and how to space them out. Given that they can adjust weekly as needed for these minor fluctuations.

swader999 4y ago

I can say how long my software compile or build time takes fairly accurately. That's the better analogy to use with construction. The rest of the software project is design work, I'm moving walls around, adding more load bearing, and so on.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hinkley 4y ago
I’m surprised how often people are wrong about simple things like this. If a build takes five minutes, that’s the absolute least amount of time before you’ll have a binary. The CI tool could have a queuing glitch. You could have a flaky test, you could be failing to isolate multiple integration test runs properly and one could ruin the other. But that’s just the simple stuff, the stuff without humans. Most of the time if something will take five minutes, we often try to find something to do that will take a few minutes. Well guess what, we always underestimate how long things will take, ususally by a factor of two. So a five minute build can take ten minutes for you to notice if it succeeded. And if it failed thirty seconds in, you might still be looking at fifteen to twenty minutes to the end of the second build (the more failures the lower the likelihood someone will multitask, but for some they only watch the third try closely). This doubling and tripling is why it’s more important than you might expect for compile and test times to be very fast. An extra minute can turn into three way too often.
foolfoolz 4y ago
the workers in trades in a construction project have plans. they have schematics that say do this here. to this exact dimension. using this exact type of connector. they don’t (usually) say which tools to use or how to do everything, it’s assumed you know compare this to a software team that has plans (design docs) for everything they want o build. they have schematics (tickets) that say do this here. to this exact interface. they don’t (usually) say which tools to use or how to do everything, it’s assumed you know i don’t think these scenarios should be that far apart. those people in the skyscraper aren’t moving walls. that would screw over the whole project. they have the output of more planning so they don’t have to. and it paid off during implementation

golemotron 4y ago

> Coming from a software perspective, I thought this was pretty impressive. When was the last time anyone told you something was going to take a week and it actually took a week? :D If you are asked to write the same exact piece of code (like each floor) 18 times you'd probably have no problem meeting schedule.

dogcomplex 4y ago
And, crucially, the entire project is preplanned. That preplanning is the software phase equivalent - the construction is running the code. (Or at least, the preplan is defining all the necessary function definitions and connecting them confidently, and construction is just writing each implementation.)

mikesurowiec 4y ago

If you're interested in learning more the term to search is "takt-time planning", specifically as it relates to lean construction methodology rather than manufacturing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takt_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takt_time

azepoi 4y ago
Knowing German I thought for sure this is the word I know from German. And it was but surprisingly through Japanese takuto taimu.

nonethewiser 4y ago

My impression is a week is far more time than they need.

colineartheta 4y ago
Have you ever worked on the construction of a skyscraper?
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  A Chinese construction company built a 10-story building in a day, and a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days. I am not sure what "union break" is in Chinese...I would brush up. You can say that we need experts, teams of consultants to issue reports at $1,000 per hour on disturbances to the local newt population or whatever, we need to pay off the bureaucrats in planning, we need to pay the unions and organized crime in NY...the reality is that someone has to pay this, and the US isn't efficient anymore. Layers of graft at every stage. China has just cut out the corruption, and they can sell the same goods at half the price, make double the profit...they just do it better.
  - junofan 4y ago
    Ok to be fair that’s called tofu building 豆腐工程 and it’s a different form of corruption.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      Buildings collapse in the US too. And it actually results in buildings get built. You think the US isn't corrupt: how many consultants are taking their piece? The contractors, planning bureaucrats, the environmental consultants, architects, lawyers...it is endemic. At least in China you only need to pay off a few people, in the US you need to pay tens of thousands of consultants whose have acquired this role of tax collector through collecting various bits of paper from corrupt institutions (thank god for legacy admissions, right?). No-one cares how sausage is made, they just want to know how it tastes. Chinese corruption gets things done. US corruption breeds more weakness, more waste, more corruption.

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

another classic in the "software dev suprised other people are good at their jobs"

heleninboodler 4y ago
Frankly, it's hard to believe they pay us for this shit, until you remember that we're often the only option.

01100011 4y ago

I've never been on anything that tight, but I'll say that the projects I've been on where we used Gantt charts and had a dedicated project manager got done with a lot more precision than anything managed by an agile process. Maybe it's just me, but having my reputation staked on my estimates with an easy to read chart of dependencies and deadlines helps me 'servo' my effort(i.e. work overtime) and come in closer to the estimate. I wouldn't suggest that for everyone, but some of us like that sort of pressure and the feeling that comes with nailing it. Then again, I don't have kids.

lmm 4y ago
Bruh stop being a bootlicker; even if you enjoy doing unpaid work, you're undermining your colleagues who probably don't. When the work takes longer than estimated, that's a problem with the estimate, not a reason you should be giving more hours of your life to rich owners.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  > even if you enjoy doing unpaid work, you're undermining your colleagues who probably don't Busting my ass in my younger days to make "impossible" deadlines was far from unpaid work. It was a conscious tradeoff that paid off extremely well in cash and stock, and nobody cared about "undermining" their colleagues who had the exact same opportunities but chose not to chase them. I don't "enjoy doing unpaid work", I "enjoy impressing people who casually throw big bags of money at people who are useful to them."
bfeynman 4y ago
IIRC this falls into classic fallacy where teams set low goals so as to always exceed them. The better way is to have people estimate and bet money on delivery.
- _0ffh 4y ago
  Maybe a bigger company could do it like some card games decide on who will choose the game: Make several teams "bid" on the contract, the one with the best bid gets it, but winning the game (e.g. getting bonuses) depends on if they can actually deliver on their bid.

LegitShady 4y ago

One thing to consider is that when you're building up into the air instead of digging into the ground, you have much fewer opportunities for unknowns to affect you.

umvi 4y ago

I can tell you with great precision how long it will take me to build software that has requirements as precise as a skyscraper's. The problem is that most of the time the software to be built has nebulous requirements

acjacobson 4y ago
And changing ones. I imagine once a skyscraper's plan is set it really doesn't change much at all.

2143 4y ago

This could be because construction (civil engineering?) is a fairly mature field that's been around for hundreds of years. Of course there's new materials and designs and everything but there are also established methodologies and standard practices. Add things generally go according to plan in Western countries so I'm not surprised. (I'm from a non-Western country where long term planning of anything is futile — too much entropy and chaos). Computers, software etc is a very young field in comparison. By the year 4723 things would hopefully be standardized (and possibly build themselves).

wizofaus 4y ago
While the maturity of the field is surely part of it, the fact remains that a typical piece of computer software almost certainly has a lot more unique complexity and functionality than a typical building. It's pretty rare a building is expected to provide the ability to do something that no other building has ever done before, yet we expect this sort of thing of software all the time. Nor is a building expected to perform complex logical and arithmetical operations while in use, or if it is (e.g. software controlling the elevators or climate control system), it's using more-or-less off-the-shelf componentry to do so.
- jq-r 4y ago
  I would say that both you and the parent are right. Software engineering is both new, and non-standard. So we get worst of both worlds, on one hand there are no good truly standard practices, and on the other the technology is very complex and rapidly changing absolutely all the time. Knowing this, one could say that its a minor miracle anything gets shipped in this industry.

jen729w 4y ago

Similar story: I asked a friend, who ran public comms on a rail extension project, to see her schedule. Two Fridays away at 11:05 a concrete truck turns up and pours. At 13:10 something is laid by some specialist in the concrete. At 14:50 another thing happens. I asked her if she was joking and she looked at me like I was mad. Of course not. The concrete needs to be poured and then the truck goes somewhere else. When it hardens a thing has to happen and then the guy who checks the thing turns up and they’ve only got him for half a day and so on and so forth. My mate says that “if they built bridges like we built IT infrastructure a lot more people would die”.

pif 4y ago
Did you ask her what happens if the concrete truck gets stuck in an accident on the freeway?
- wil421 4y ago
  They send another truck because of the first one didn’t make it in time the concrete company is going to have a fun day cleaning stuck concrete out of their truck. My father-in-law was in commercial construction for decades, now turned general contracting post 2008 recession, and he has binder and binders of contractor business cards, including a concrete section. I can assure you project managers would be frantically calling all concrete companies trying to find a replacement. And they will.
  - maratc 4y ago
    If it's a railway project they have likely booked several trucks already, doing several deliveries, so one of them having an accident is not likely to matter.
    - jen729w 4y ago
      Forgive me if I’m wrong — I have a sibling comment here and am not a construction PM — but no. This comment beautifully demonstrates the point: the disconnect between our industry and the physical world. There are not just concrete trucks just lined up down the road, waiting for a PM to say “okay we’ve got enough, you can stop now”. The amount of concrete is known. It is planned. The 3rd party concrete supplier is given an order well ahead of time. They plan their trucks and drivers. None of this is made up on the day. One of them having an accident matters. This is why IT projects are such a shambles. When we forget something — a change request, say — we just say “oh well, that’s a pity”. Some poor schmuck has a bad afternoon running around making it good and life goes on. We get away with it because it isn’t concrete in a truck.

pif 4y ago

Did you ask him if the design phase had proceeded so smoothly? Writing software is the equivalent of creating the blueprints; compiling is the equivalent of pouring concrete.

cainxinth 4y ago

I studied the financing aspect of large building construction in a law school class. It works in a similar fashion. The development money is doled out on a very structured basis, sometimes literally one floor at a time. There are numerous milestones and you have to stick to the schedule or the money stops.

nitbix 4y ago

> "That doesn't happen. It can't. They have a week." Maybe it didn't happen that time, or maybe it did and they remediated somehow (at higher cost), but I have a dataset that says it happens all the time. And that "it can't happen" attitude is part of why it actually happens- nobody is looking ahead at uncertainty.

splistud 4y ago

[dead]

niuzeta 4y ago

> That will get jumped up on Memorial Day" Totally off topic, but is this a normal usage of this phrase? I've never seen/read "get jumped up" used in this sense.

JohnFen 4y ago
I think it's pretty normal construction jargon, yes. It's a bit unusual to laymen's ears, but the meaning is still pretty clear.
heleninboodler 4y ago
Took me by surprise, but it makes perfect sense in context. I just assumed it was the cranebro vernacular.

mckravchyk 4y ago

To contrast that, in the last few days I have spent 14h that I never considered in the schedule to wrangle TypeScript issues and bugs (4 to be precise).