50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics

Summary

Summarized wtih ChatGPT

Brian Potter has been writing the Construction Physics newsletter since 2020, covering topics like construction productivity, energy, and technological progress. He highlights that construction costs have not significantly dropped over time, and innovation in the industry is slower than in others. Potter emphasizes the importance of understanding historical context to improve construction practices and infrastructure.

Key Takeaways:

1. Construction costs have remained high despite technological advancements.
2. Historical context is crucial for understanding current construction practices.
3. Embrace innovation while acknowledging past lessons to improve the industry.

Highlights from Article

For as far back as we have data (the late 19th/early 20th century), outside of a few brief windows, construction in the US has never gotten cheaper.Individual construction tasks have, on average, not gotten cheaper since at least the 1950s.

• Prices go up. Always

Today Chicago skyscrapers are built roughly twice as fast as New York skyscrapers.

An important inciting event for wind and solar getting widely deployed and falling down the learning curve was PURPA, the law that required US utilities to buy small amounts of power from independent producers. PURPA was the result of lobbying efforts from a single, small company in New Hampshire that wanted to burn garbage.

• Windmills in the U.S. were initially made viable by lobbying from one company that helped reduce the bar for little players to play ball

Modern shipbuilding methods were invented in US shipyards that produced Liberty and Victory ships during WWII. After the war, a US shipyard supervisor, Elmer Hahn, brought the techniques to Japan, who improved and refined them. Several decades later, Japan had conquered the shipbuilding industry, and the US had to re-learn those same techniques from Japanese shipbuilders.

All material owns to the authors, of course. If I’m highlighting or writing notes on this, I mostly likely recommend reading the original article, of course.

See other recent things I’ve read here.