1 HN user recommended this documentary1 month2021–2023score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN cites it as proof that infrastructure can be rebuilt very fast when incentives and urgency line up.
A half-hour television special on the 2007 fiery collapse of a connector in the Bay Area's MacArthur Maze and its rebuilding in 26 days. It was produced for the Professional Engineers in California Government.
“The overpass collapsed on April 29th. They had it reopened to traffic 26 days later.” (HN, 2023)
There's also the MacArthur Maze collapse in the Bay area 2007 [1] The overpass collapsed on April 29th. They had it reopened to traffic 26 days later. This was American leadership, project management and engineering at it's finest [2]. [1] [link] [2] [this video]
Documentary of reopening a collapsed overpass in 26 days.
Plenty of examples of massive speedups in repairs: 1: [link] 2: [this video] It's not that we can't "build quickly," but that we can't build anything _new_ quickly.
For a counter example, the rebuilding of the MacArthur Maze in 26 days back in 2007. [link] > A contractor with a proven track record of rebuilding damaged freeways (most notably the Santa Monica Freeway after the 1994 Northridge earthquake) well ahead of schedule, C. C. Myers, Inc., submitted a winning bid of $876,075 to repair the damage to the I-580 connector. The bid was estimated to cover only one-third of the cost of the work, but the firm counted on making up the shortfall with an incentive of $200,000 per day if the work was completed before June 27, 2007. > On the evening of Thursday, May 24, the I-580 connector re-opened, just before the busy Memorial Day weekend. The deadline to finish the project was beaten by over a month, with the contractor earning the $5 million bonus for early completion. The entire reconstruction project was completed only 26 days after the original accident. Amazing: The Rebuilding the MacArthur Maze - [this video]
Counter example of rapid, incentivized freeway rebuild.
What developers think when they hear 'aggressive timeline': [link] What managers think: [this video] Point being, nobody gets a documentary about themselves made for delivering against a boring deadline.
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