Why aren’t civil engineers getting on board with modern product management methods?

Everywhere we look there is a clear, urgent need for new roads, bridges, buildings, structures. Why can’t we have them today? It’s because of all these people with jobs we’ve never heard of who inspect stuff and write complicated documents — I call them “analysis paralysis professionals” — who want to think about everything endlessly instead of getting down to the real work of building.

In the time it takes to blueprint a building you could pour literally thousands of tons of concrete into a hole, and stick girders and rebar into the concrete before it dries. Or even better, attach some platforms to the girders and get some near-term use out of the work. These structures don’t have to be perfect! We can repair and reinforce them if they start crumbling, tipping or bending. And if a building collapses or a bridge falls into a river, we can can pivot and rebuild something much better with the knowledge we’ve gained through the so-called “failure”. Sure, there’s inconvenience, frustration, loss of life, but a catastrophe produces precisely the data we need to make better, safer and more innovative structures, and isn’t that the whole point of it all: Constantly improving structures?

I invite you to imagine with me a future where our cities work like our mobile phones. If we were to question the bureaucratic habits that bog down the building of our physical environment and adopt the best practices of software development, we (or at least those of us who survive the “fast failures”) could enjoy the same vibrant, ever-evolving, ever-updating, trial-and-error innovation we enjoy in our digital environment today.