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One small doubt. One big decision.
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Talking to good friends in Ferrovial and health & safety, we end up comparing cultures. Comparing projects. And disasters… UK. In the 2000s. Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Budget: more than £4 billion Big… very big project, with lots of complexities and workers. Every engineer knows that… If something went wrong… it wouldn’t be small. So, they treated safety like a system… for real. Not a slogan. Daily briefings. Clear reporting lines. No ambiguity on responsibility. And… Anyone could stop the job. No hierarchy. No politics. Sounds obvious. It’s not. Not at least 20 years ago. Remember. Stopping work = delays Delays = cost Cost = pressure And pressure kills good decisions. Well… One day. Steel erection phase. Heavy lift. Complex geometry. Tight tolerances. Something feels off. Not dramatic. No alarms. Just… not right. A worker calls it. Stops the operation. Think about that moment. Hundreds of people. Equipment booked. Programme tight. And one person says: “Stop.” Con 2 cojon€s. They check. Re-run the setup. Recalculate. The guy was right. The lift could have failed. They adjusted. Replanned. Completed safely. No headlines. No investigation. No crisis. Which is exactly the point. Accidents are rarely sudden. They build up. Small misalignments. Tiny assumptions. Pressure to keep going. Etc. Most projects say: “Safety first.” Few actually mean: “Stop the job, even if it hurts.” Today, unfortunately when most people in the room… feel something is off. Few say it. And that’s where disasters are born. If you want to understand how these moments really work… You already know where to go. Link below ​The Room​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Canada. Mid-2010s. Milton–Madison Bridge Not a PPP, but a serious piece of infrastructure. Old steel truss bridge. Built in 1929. As an engineer… I love it. Around 13,000 vehicles per day. But… like all old bridges… It was structurally done. Fatigue. Corrosion. Narrow lanes. No shoulders. A bad accident waiting to happen. So they decided to replace it. Nothing new. But… they chose a method most people would avoid. Slide-In Bridge Construction or SIBC The idea is brilliant. Build the entire...
I’m reviewing a project right now. A mess. Close to failure. Fixing situations like this… is my bread and butter. But the real question is not: “How do we get out of this sh*t?” It’s: “How did we end up here… again?” Because this is not random. Every country has it. Every sector repeats it. And no… it’s not because people are stupid. Governments hire smart people. Companies bring top talent. Advisors look impressive on paper. And still… Same problems. Same patterns. Same endings. So what’s...
October 1962. A room in Washington. A few men in suits. Coffee. Cigarettes. Maps of Cuba. What can go wrong? Welcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the permission of any meeting between Trump with his advisors, the most dangerous meeting in modern history. The problem? The Soviets had possibly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. 13 days to decide. Simple, right? Destroy the sites. Show strength. Win. That’s what half the room wanted. The other half? “Let’s not start World War III on a Tuesday...