korrents

What Brian Potter thinks about Japan

@brian-potter · 43 positions · 1 change of mind

Structural engineer and writer, author of the Construction Physics newsletter, where he takes apart how large physical things — buildings, ships, semiconductor fabs, aeroplanes — actually get made, and why the cost of making them moves the way it does.

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2 dated positions, 2024 to 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Brian Potter has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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  1. Our readingFactory-built construction has not raised productivity: the countries that prefabricate most, Sweden and Japan, have had flat construction productivity for decades.

    Their wordsSweden, for instance, is often praised for its high adoption of prefabricated construction, but since the 1990s Sweden has had roughly flat construction labor productivity, even as it has made more extensive use of prefabrication.

    ↗Stagnant Construction Productivity Is a Worldwide Problemconstruction-physics.com 1st of 3 in this piece

    Interesting
  2. 15 months earlier

  3. Our readingCommercial shipbuilding keeps moving to whichever country has the cheapest labour, and America has never been that country.

    Their wordsShipbuilding is labor intensive, and we see a repeated pattern of it moving to countries with low-cost labor: from Britain to Japan, then to Korea, then to China.

    ↗Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?construction-physics.com 6th of 8 in this piece

    ChinaAmerica

    Interesting