Here's my favorite example: Plans for the Empire State Building announced August 29, 1929. Construction began on March 17, 1930. The building formally opened on May 1, 1931.
No computer aided drafting, no project management software. Oh, and the stock market crashed shortly after the building was announced.
The Empire State Building had more than double the worker deaths than One World Trade. One World Trade was lambasted as being horrendous on its safety record for a modern building.
I don’t know much about this topic but having it without comparing worker safety seems like we aren’t isolating the variables well.
To me the Empire State Building is a great example of how modern risk management introduces significant risk to a project. IMO the time taken to complete a project is frequently the most critical risk factor. The lack of computerisation and bureaucracy meant that the focus was on how to build it rather than on how to “manage” it.
But I don’t understand the problem with NEPA. Can someone explain? Protecting the environment seems, on its face, to be a good thing.
