The World’s Fastest Man (2014)
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I know that one section in particular that they repaired was done really shoddy -- there was giant lip between pavement sections that would make your car shudder like it hit a giant pothole. Everytime I drove over it I cursed their horrible work and was pissed that they earned a bonus for doing half-assed work.
> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
That one project makes up for every alleged wrong he did in his entire lifetime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Maze
Some other titans you may want to read about who achieved great success through sheer force of will:
- Frank Robinson, Founder, Robinson Helicopters (#1 helicopter manufacturer in the world by unit sales)
- Chuck Yeager: "The X-1 wasn't a plane. Chuck Yeager was the X-1." (The world's first and only combined test pilot/rocket mechanic. That combination was needed to break the sound barrier and survive.)
- the Florida airport consultant/GM who saved San Jose from bankruptcy by saving $2 billion in overruns on Terminal 3.
Interviewer: The CEOs who took their companies from good to great were largely anonymous. Is that an accident?
Jim Collins: There is a direct relationship between the absence of celebrity and the presence of good-to-great results. Why? First, when you have a celebrity, the company turns into “the one genius with 1,000 helpers.” It creates a sense that the whole thing is really about the CEO. At a deeper level, we found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have an ego. It means that at each decision point—at each of the critical junctures when Choice A would favor their ego and Choice B would favor the company and the work—time and again the good-to-great leaders pick Choice B. Celebrity CEOs, at those same decision points, are more likely to favor self and ego over company and work.
Source: https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-g...
They are treating people so badly and the author is worshipping them for that. Incredibly wrong.
Measure the happiness of the employees and you can figure out if this speed is worth it.
This will not be surprising to most, but it's not C.C. Myers at 76 years old building these projects. It's his field personnel -- Superintendents, Foreman, Apprentices, etc. The secret sauce is the on-the-ground leaders and their adherence to business process to get results.
Of course this was not discussed in the article, and as a result, renders moot discussion of performance improvements based on his means & methods.
Do other construction companies realistically struggle to finish early because of their inefficient structure or is some other compulsion factor at play?
It's important to understand that the construction industry is a well trained, but poorly educated workforce. That translates to a lack of comprehensive planning and foresight. The better companies have solved this problem by identifying individuals with the right mix of "global thinking" and field experience and charged them with managing projects.
Lesser companies still win work (especially during economic boom times) and, as there are so many, serve as a constant reminder of how straightforward projects can go awry.
He demands 12 hour days, and he gets more efficiency than other contractors; definitely different than the view that there's some optimum level of work <=40 hours/week after which returns diminish so much as to not be worth it. Maybe the game industry's perpetual crunch time isn't as insane from a strictly financial perspective as it seems at first blush?
Contracts with $200,000/day early completion bonuses are not handed out to everyone. While they may be "hard bid" by dozens of contractors, preferential treatment is accorded to those with relationships.
If you're that guy AND you landed the contract, your decision to raid manpower from other local players is as straightforward as they come.
My only cite is indirect: Angus Calder "the people's war" but I would be surprised if this isn't well documented in the real literature.
Also, some of the outcomes very quickly become externalities: nobody notices the bodge job until 5+ years later, and people die young of non-specific stress related diseases which don't get attributed to work.
It's entirely possible for construction-type work where specialized workers have to take turns (backhoe guy digs a hole, workers prep with hand tools, concrete is poured from cement mixer and then smoothed out with hand tools, lather, rinse, repeat), that there's enough built-in downtime / break time between steps that workers can handle longer shifts without reduced productivity.
In the mining industry it's referred to as 'mine time'. The majority of your 12-hour day is spent waiting for other necessary things (competing work, isolations, hazard analysis, approvals) to happen so a 20-minute job can take three hours.
I still recommend reading Calder, but I would take what I said with a pinch of salt.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aCRuuAXx-WkC&pg=PA397&l...
For construction and manufacturing work, the longer the hours, the more work will get done. There is an argument to be made for diminishing returns, but it's a lot less than for office jobs.
In case there is still a problem: https://web.archive.org/web/20180827010038/https://www.comst...
Rushing bridges and tunnel jobs seems... risky.
The "little league contribution" as justification to bust your ass just seems a little suspect.