Built to Fail

The construction industry is broken, bloated, and stuck in the past. But there is a way to fix it.

The construction industry is as big as it is important. Without construction, our society would cease to be. We would have no ports, roads, or bridges. No communications networks, power grids, or water systems. No hospitals. No schools. No homes.

But we can barely get anything built. Capital works projects are routinely finished late and over budget. Everyone acknowledges the problem, but no one seems to have the vision, or the will, to fix it.

The problem is industry relies too much on outmoded approaches to management and production that arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The preoccupation with Taylorist scientific management, project management’s current focus on planning, and administration interfere with the critical work of designing and building, giving way to the bloated, bureaucratic boondoggles that have marred the industry’s reputation.

The solution is an innovative, forward-thinking approach to construction that leverages operations science and utilizes revolutionary advances in digital technology to cut through the red tape and deliver on time and on budget. As Built to Fail shows, this is not mere theory; these ideas are being successfully implemented, providing facility owners and construction professionals who adopt them a competitive advantage and meeting the needs of citizens who depend on those projects to work, live, and thrive. But change is slow, and the people calling the shots—backed by the teeming ranks of administrators, planners, project managers, and others—are unable, or unwilling, to carve a new path forward. As a result, everyone suffers.

It is time to move construction into the twenty-first century. This book is a manifesto for why and a blueprint for how—a call to overcome the status quo and remake an industry on which civilization itself depends.