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Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

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Re: Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

#121

Post by smoyer »

ams6110 wrote: post #95
smoyer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like exactly what I would have recommended when the sub-prime market caused Wall Street's collapse ... people should have gone to jail but instead received performance bonuses. Executives who directed the bridge construction seem to have landed cushy non-government jobs instead, but the level of corruption and blame-shifting amazes me in both cases.

In both cases the behavior was enabled and encouraged by the government regulators. Should they also go to prison?

Yes

Re: Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

#122

Post by Mvandenbergh »

bradleysmith wrote: post #110
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see any evidence of corruption here. Just accepting a low bid from a contractor that scored poorly on the technical evaluation. Sometimes that pays off, in this case it clearly didn't.

"Caltrans permitted an unknown number of cracked or suspect welds in the suspension span. After two senior engineers challenged quality assurance practices, Caltrans reassigned one and let the other’s contract lapse." "Tony Anziano, chief executive for toll-bridge work, made at least 64 visits to Shanghai, stayed in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels and spent more than $300,000 on travel during construction."

>"Caltrans permitted an unknown number of cracked or suspect welds in the suspension span.

That obviously is not good and is a sign of a badly run programme, but it is also true that structures are built with a certain level of defects all the time. It sounds like in this case they may have made judgements about that which were questionable but accepting work (including structural) which has some flaws is not abnormal, the question is whether the judgement as to the materiality of the flaws was made for sound engineering reasons or not.

>After two senior engineers challenged quality assurance practices, Caltrans reassigned one and let the other’s contract lapse."

Yes, that does sound quite bad. It's by far the most damning thing, I can't determine from here whether they used good engineering judgement, but dismissing whistleblowers is bad news. It's not corruption though.

>"Tony Anziano, chief executive for toll-bridge work, made at least 64 visits to Shanghai, stayed in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels and spent more than $300,000 on travel during construction."

Totally normal. Anyone writing "one of the city's most luxurious hotels" doesn't understand business travel in Asia where there may not be much between the tiers of "luxury" and "doesn't meet basic standards". Most of that money went on air travel, and I wouldn't want to travel back and forth to China 64 times in a short period. That's not a bribe, it's a punishment.

Admittedly, with this much travel they're going to eat into the savings from using a cheap contractor, not to mention the cost of accommodating their China team which was there full time.

This doesn't sound like corruption, it sounds like they foolishly picked a low bidder that couldn't hack it, tempers within the organisation started to flare when they realised how fucked they were and this guy flew back and forth way more times than was planned in a frantic attempt to fix the cluster-fuck before it all blew up in their faces.

Re: Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

#123

Post by PhasmaFelis »

ChuckFrank wrote: post #29
manifesto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched on Delta.com. If you book a week ahead, the price for a round trip ticket in First/business class ranges from $6,000 to $11,000, so spending 10k in a month is "normal".

Why would you need to book a week ahead? And why would you go first/business class? It's a huge project, there's got to be scheduled client side meetings, and those should be scheduled months in advance.

I'm 6'2" and broad. Spending an hour and a half in an economy seat is pretty unpleasant. 12 hours would be positively inhumane, and I'd need at least a day or two to recover. 12 hours, each way, once a month? Fuck that. I'll quit and work at McDonald's first.

Re: Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

#124

Post by myrandomcomment »

mikeash wrote: post #90
vacri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to this question: "And why would you go first/business class?" Is this statement: "It's a huge project" Apart from getting far enough along in your career to be handling huge projects and therefore probably entitled to some cream, it also just doesn't make sense from a business point of view - save a few thousand on a flight, but the extra fatigue makes good decision-making harder. Put another way: who sho…

For me, it would come down to this: If you're making me fly roundtrip to China in economy once a month, I quit. I make that trip once every year or two and I hate hate hate the travel part of it. Being there is good, getting there and back is absolutely awful. So I would say, either pay for business class, give me a raise large enough to cover paying for it myself, or find somebody else. If you choose the last option…

I have done just 90K miles this year to Asia. 57 times just to Tokyo in the last 4 years! There is no way I would even think about doing this in economy. I am not effective at my job for a day after a flight like this in economy. And lets not forget the time away from the family. If you have to be in Asia for a Monday meeting you have to leave Saturday as you lose a day.

Re: Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

#125

Post by mikeash »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #124
mikeash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it would come down to this: If you're making me fly roundtrip to China in economy once a month, I quit. I make that trip once every year or two and I hate hate hate the travel part of it. Being there is good, getting there and back is absolutely awful. So I would say, either pay for business class, give me a raise large enough to cover paying for it myself, or find somebody else. If you choose the last option…

I have done just 90K miles this year to Asia. 57 times just to Tokyo in the last 4 years! There is no way I would even think about doing this in economy. I am not effective at my job for a day after a flight like this in economy. And lets not forget the time away from the family. If you have to be in Asia for a Monday meeting you have to leave Saturday as you lose a day.

You have my sympathy. Even in the better classes that can't be fun after the first few times.

Re: Troubled welds on the Bay Bridge

#126

Post by bradleysmith »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #122
bradleysmith wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Caltrans permitted an unknown number of cracked or suspect welds in the suspension span. After two senior engineers challenged quality assurance practices, Caltrans reassigned one and let the other’s contract lapse." "Tony Anziano, chief executive for toll-bridge work, made at least 64 visits to Shanghai, stayed in one of the city’s most luxurious hotels and spent more than $300,000 on travel during construction."

>"Caltrans permitted an unknown number of cracked or suspect welds in the suspension span. That obviously is not good and is a sign of a badly run programme, but it is also true that structures are built with a certain level of defects all the time. It sounds like in this case they may have made judgements about that which were questionable but accepting work (including structural) which has some flaws is not abnorma…

I agree that the statements I highlighted aren't really "evidence" of corruption, just facts indicative of possible corruption.

Corruption doesn't necessarily have to be the acceptance of a bribe, though. The dismissal or re-assignment of whistle-blowers that are pointing out potential dangers in the project IS corruption; it's the dishonest use of authority for personal benefit, or to avoid personal responsibility for wrong-doing or negligence.

You're probably right, about the travel. 64 trips back and forth does sound like a punishment, and at ~5k per trip, it doesn't really sound that extravagant. Certainly not enough to think they were lavish bribe-trips.

Your last paragraph actually is a pretty good synopsis. This whole thing was probably a scramble to keep ahead of a badly managed project.

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