Yup, and with an equal amount of mindblowing-units-of-money spent, infrastructure projects all around me are still failing as well, or at least being modified (read: downsized), delayed and/or budget-inflated beyond recognition.

So, what's the point here, exactly? "Only licensed engineers as codified by (local!) law are allowed to do projects?" Nah, can't be it, their track record still has too many failures, sometimes even spectacularly explosive and/or implosive ones.

"Any public project should only follow Best Practices"? Sure... "And only make The People feel good"... Incoherent!

Ehhm, so, yeah, maybe things are just complicated, and we should focus more on the amount of effort we're prepared to put in, the competency (c.q. pay grade) of the staff we're willing to assign, and exactly how long we're willing to wait prior to conceding defeat?

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graemep 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the problems is scale.

Large scale systems tend to fail. large centralised and centrally managed systems with big budgets and large numbers of people who need to coordinate, lots of people with an interest in the project pushing and lobbying for different things.

Multiple smaller systems is usually a better approach, where possible. Not possible for things like transport infrastructure, but often possible for software.

	▲	AlexandrB 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Not possible for things like transport infrastructure It depends what you define as a system. Arguably a lot of transport infrastructure is a bunch of small systems linked with well-understood interfaces (e.g. everyone agrees on the gauge of rail that's going to be installed and the voltage in the wires). Consider how construction works in practice. There are hundreds or thousands of workers working on different parts of the overall project and each of them makes small decisions as part of their work to achieve the goal. For example, the electrical wiring of a single train station is its own self-contained system. It's necessary for the station to work, but it doesn't really depend on how the electrical system is installed in the next station in the line. The electricians installing the wiring make a bunch of tiny decisions about how and where the wires are run that are beyond the ability of someone to specify centrally - but thanks to well known best practices and standards, everything works when hooked up together.

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sebastos 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nailed it, but I fear this wisdom will be easily passed by by someone who doesn’t already intuit it from years of experience. Like the Island de la Muerta: wisdom that can only be found if you already know where it is.