Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard it said that the reason bits of the Roman aqueducts are still standing is that they were overbuilt by at least a factor of 2. The craftsman often wants to overbuild something. It's part of what gets them out of bed in the morning, or lets them sleep at night. What if you - or someone else - got your margin of error wrong, like the Citibank building? A little extra to deal with unexpected situations isn't s…
But it won't look as good on the quarterly report. What profit has the managerial class extracted from the aqueduct?
Someone, and I wish I recall who or even where, once sold me on the notion that Roman expansion was empowered by the same kind of 'replaceable parts' strategy that powered the ascention of the United States.
According to this person, everywhere the Romans went they left cookie cutter solutions to problems that made their military more fungible. If I move these guys from southern France, to northern Greece, everything is set up the same way and they can hit the ground running.
Where we have standardized manufactured equipment, they had standardized infrastructure.