Build Big Ideas

For full show notes, see www.buildbigideas.com/post/a-view-of-the-rocky-mountains-at-200-kph-front-range-passenger-rail-podcast-episode-6 

The big idea for this episode is a brief case study of a future passenger rail initiative in Colorado.  We discuss how passenger rail is planned and integrated into existing infrastructure and ponder some important planning assumptions for rail mass transit in the future.

Currently it takes 70 min to travel from Fort Collins, CO to Denver, CO...without traffic or construction....some days the trek can take 90+ minutes. Imagine if it took, 45min, every time in all conditions.

For full show notes, see www.buildbigideas.com/post/shelterbox-ceo-sanj-srikanthan-ep-005

Outline of the conversation:

- Sanj's career progression.

- Overview of ShelterBox organization, including the history, mission, and funding model.

- Case studies of ShelterBox projects.

- Next steps for the community after ShelterBox leaves.

- Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and infrastructure.

- Contact info for Shelterbox and how people can learn more or get involved.

https://www.shelterbox.org/           (United Kingdom site)

https://www.shelterboxusa.org/

See www.buildbigideas.com/post/what-risk-is-podcast-ep-4 for full show notes and references.

Risk is about rationally allocating resources into an uncertain future.

In the world of infrastructure, risk equals probability times consequence.

Some business school students may learn the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) where risk is considered to be equivalent to volatility, as represented by the greek letter Beta.

Value investors often say, instead, that risk is the probability of permanent loss of capital.

For-profit businesses and investors allocate their capital in pursuit of the highest financial return.  Return on invested capital (ROIC) or return on equity (ROE) are guiding metrics.

Government-funded infrastructure used to often be allocated using earmarks.  This method allocates resources towards political power and was referred to as "pork."  There were pros and cons to this approach, but it sometimes resulted in the construction of "bridges to nowhere."

Governments-owned infrastructure projects typically instead consider cost-to-benefit ratios for new builds.  For prioritizing maintenance or rehabilitation work on existing infrastructure, probable life-loss or economic loss from failure or loss-of-service provide guidance.

A fix-as-failed approach may be appropriate for infrastructure that does not have life-loss and has low economic-loss during the down-time before the system can be repaired.

For high-life loss or economic-loss infrastructure, the maintenance and repair must be much more pro-active.

As an example in the world of dam safety, fix-as-fail may be an appropriate and effective approach to the navigation dams on the Mississippi River. In general, the primary purpose of these dams is to hold a pool that will be at least nine feet deep, allowing barges to pass. If such a dam fails, no life loss is anticipated and the economic impacts are limited to the temporarily delayed shipment of grains and other commodities. These commodities are typically not urgently needed at market and could be shipped, albeit more expensively, by rail or truck.

At the other end of the spectrum would be high-head dams in the Western USA. The primary purpose of these dams is typically flood control, water supply, and/or hydro-power generation. In the failure of such a dam, thousands or tens of thousands or more could potentially lose their life. Such dams need much more pro-active maintenance and repair. Waiting for failure before repairing such dams is not a viable resource allocation strategy.

An extreme example of a high risk dam is the Mosul Dam in Iraq. There is a high probability that this dam may fail and the consequence has been estimated to be on the order of one million lives lost. 

Another extreme example is the power-lines and forest fires in California. As I understand it, the power company had not been pro-actively trimming trees away from their power-lines. The resulting sparks initiated massive forest fires with correspondingly large economic and life-loss consequences. 

In order to better understand current best practices about how risk management is applied to infrastructure it is instructive to look to history and the origin of risk assessments.

The Rasmussen report of 1975 is the seminal infrastructure probabilistic risk assessment. Rasmussen was a professor at MIT and he lead the process, funded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, whereby the probability and consequences of the failure of nuclear power generators were estimated.

Link to our blog post on the Rasmussen Report.

See www.buildbigideas.com/post/who-we-are for full show notes.

We experience infrastructure every day both in a macro and micro sense. Historically it has been an engine for national economies, thus we all, society as a whole, experience its collective benefits.

It is also the road you drive to school or work on.  When we turn the light switch on, the lights turn on.  When we turn the faucet, the water flows.  These and many more on-demand services, that are so ubiquitous we don’t even think about it, is infrastructure.  Take for granted.  Intersection of the individual Human level and the national system level.  Both ends of the spectrum of scale. Provides an environment where some ideas are obviously big and bold while others are seemingly small but with the large-scale of infrastructure, have a big impact. We wanted to explore how engineers have shaped our world, learn more about how the built and natural environments and come together to create the underpinnings of the growth and advancement of civilization.

We will be doing so by conversations, reading, interviews

Sustainability, resilience, reliability, Future of infrastructure, deep dive in at a granular level to better understand a system.

Like to learn, explore and understand the built world around you, why it the way it is, who’s idea was it? The how or why behind the infrastructure you see?

We believe you will find the experience interesting, enlightening, and fun.  We will learn together. We hope you join us as we explore the big ideas and people

Who is this podcast for?

Goals for the podcast

Learn more about who we are at www.buildbigideas.com/about

See www.buildbigideas.com/post/effective-meetings for full show notes.

Four Imperatives for Effective Meetings:

Five Meeting Tips:

See www.buildbigideas.com for full show notes.

References

Maker’s Schedule Manager’s Schedule, by Paul Graham

Amazon Three Rules for Having an Efficient Meeting

Warren Buffett Q&A at 1999 Berkshire-Hathaway Annual Meeting, Afternoon Session (10 minutes before end of session):

How does Berkshire Hathaway add value to the companies it buys?

Warren Buffett:

See www.buildbigideas.com/post/podcast-fiu-bridge-collapse-ep1 for full show notes, slides, video, and images.

The big idea for this episode is to discuss the root causes of the collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge that occurred on 15 March 2018 in Miami, Florida.  The bridge designer pursued an ambitiously unique and complex design on a very small budget, in response to the owner's request.