@brian-potter · 43 positions · 1 change of mind · On ppll ↗
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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Construction resists new methods because whoever adopts one takes the risk and gets little of the reward
Their wordsIn many cases, the person specifying a new system won’t capture the upside from actually using it - they’ll be under a sort of reverse moral hazard, where the benefits accrue to the rest of the project team, but the risks will accrue only to them.
Their wordsA new or innovative system that involves changes to the process thus incurs a significant risk penalty that would likely exceed the expected benefits of the innovation.
Their wordsConstruction costs tend to rise at, or above, the level of overall inflation, and it rarely (if ever) gets cheaper to build houses, offices, or other buildings.
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.
Their wordsThe US has a lot to learn from other countries for how to catch up to the efficient frontier, especially for certain types of construction (ie: transit) and in certain places in the country (ie: expensive coastal metros).
Their wordsWhat is different about construction is the level of coordination that takes place: whereas in a car everything is carefully designed to tightly integrate together, in housing construction the work can be done (and often is) with surprisingly little coordination between the various trades.
Their wordsDiscussions of housing policy often focus on issues of zoning, regulation, and other supply restrictions which manifest as increased land prices, but for most American housing, the largest cost comes from building the physical structure itself.
Their wordsIt’s only in dense urban areas that the cost of land begins to dominate the cost of new housing, driven by regulatory and zoning restrictions that limit how much housing can be built in a given area.
Their wordsIf there’s one thing to take away from this essay, it's that you can’t infer a housing shortage by looking at housing construction rates in isolation.
Their wordsThere is essentially zero correlation - the metros with the largest rent increases had added population / added housing ratios no different than metros with smaller rent increases.
Their wordsThese enormous costs are ultimately due to the same factor that has steadily driven down the cost of semiconductors: Moore’s Law, the observation that the number of components on an integrated circuit tends to double every two years.
Their wordsBut as fab costs increased, it became more and more burdensome for manufacturers to operate cutting edge manufacturing facilities due to the high costs, and fewer manufacturers had the production volume to spread those costs over.
Their wordsThe cost of lithography machines is often estimated as 20% of the cost of a new fab, which means that lithography tools can cost as much as the entire fab facility itself.
Their wordsIn particular, operating a data center requires large amounts of electricity, and available power is fast becoming the binding constraint on data center construction.
Their wordsBut many of these gains have already been achieved: the best data centers already use just 10% of their electricity for cooling and other non-IT equipment.
Dan WangWriter and analyst of Chinese technology and industryChina built half of the world’s ships (by gross tonnage) in 2022, while the US had 0.2 percent of capacity: in practice, this meant that while China builds hundreds of new ships a year, the US builds three to five.↗2023 letterdanwang.co · 23 Jan 2024All korrents from this piece
Their wordsChina built half of the world’s ships (by gross tonnage) in 2022, while the US had 0.2 percent of capacity: in practice, this meant that while China builds hundreds of new ships a year, the US builds three to five.
Their wordsShipbuilding policies have long been much more focused on sheltering the industry from competition rather than driving to make it successful.
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.
Their wordsThe situation we face today, with U.S. ships costing at least twice as much to build as ships built elsewhere, is not a recent development; it’s been the norm for at least the past 100 years.
Their wordsYet solar development is hopelessly snarled by dozens of different development regulations which begin with the assumption that it will permanently and severely harm the environment unless proven otherwise, at exhaustive length.
Their wordsFab construction time in the US has increased from just over 650 days on average in the 1990s to over 900 days on average in the 2010s, compared to around 600-700 days in Asian countries, in part because of increasingly stringent environmental review processes.
Their wordsCut and cover will sometimes be the best choice from a basic cost-benefit perspective, as will elevated rail, and both are useful to have in the tunnel construction toolbox for that reason.