The Construction Infrastructure: to the beat
By Jeannine Patané • June 2005

    When I drive long distances, my mind can easily meditate to the nuances of the road. The rhythmic thuthump, thuthump, thuthump over concrete seams, accompanied by a gentle, steady bounce and a light breeze through an open window creates a transcendental experience for me. On a recent road trip, I had a rude awakening to Thuwhack!, as the car’s tire ran into a pothole. I sat upright, disturbed out of the relaxing rhythm I was in.
    Why can’t these roads be better maintained? Isn’t it important to us to have all of our roads well maintained? America is dependent on automobiles and most of our country’s infrastructure is designed around motorized vehicles. Fill in the potholes! Paint lines on these roads! Build better roads from the beginning, and by the way, whose asinine idea was it to terminate sidewalks with an abrupt curb instead of a graded ramp? How are strollers, wheelchairs, and walkers to be used on sidewalks when they can’t get on the sidewalks in the first place? Where’s the quality control?
    I cursed poor design and its failure. I reacted with the desire to blame an entity. Was it thoughtless engineers? Cheap funding from the government? Mismanaged contractors? Before we build it, we have to know how to maintain it, and by building it better, the less maintenance it should require. Thus, when replacement becomes necessary, we've had more time to create something even better than if we replaced it sooner. I continued to think about the pothole and all that was behind it.
    To build a highway is a massive endeavor, and it takes big contracting companies to build highways in a reasonable amount of time. With such large-scale construction and numerous employees, quality control can make the difference between a project nightmare and an on-time, under budget, smooth, sound, wide-shouldered super highway that has so many 3M reflectors, it’s lit up like a runway at night. When contracting companies get to be big enough that there are quality control positions, the companies have to be careful that their quality control isn't just the micro-management result of bad project managers or careless workers out for the paycheck. Balancing profit and quality reminded me of Richard, a residential contractor in the process of growing his business.
    Richard’s friends, mostly skilled craftsmen like himself, talked him into getting his general contractor license. He employed his friends to help build high-end custom homes. The craftsmanship was exceptional, however, Richard found the day-to-day frustrations of custom home building was not paying for the effort and time involved, and he was wearing too many hats, including quality control. He considered switching over to building only spec homes during the following year to make things easier for everyone. For the purpose of more profit, Richard was growing into a large contractor to keep his business afloat. I wondered how growth would affect his craftsmanship over time. He had crossed the line of a skilled craftsman with a passion for his work, to a large general contractor driven by profit, managing and selling home construction.
    Contractors for road construction carry the same attitude as contractors for residential construction. A bigger profit is to be made on bigger jobs, thus a bigger company is needed to handle a time frame. An industrial contractor that has multi-million dollar contracts with the US government once told me, “You need at least six employees to be profitable.” This claim may be true for most contractors, however, I know of at least one general contractor that keeps business small and profitable. He operates his business like a rock-n-roll band; each tradesperson is a talented player, and with the right vibes and a passion for what they do, they play their gig to get tighter & more efficient together, not to get bigger.
    I pop a tape into the car’s cassette player to listen to the sound of the music instead of the tangent in my head. I’ve done enough thinking about a pothole, and that’s all it is—a pothole. DOT maintenance will eventually patch it, and I’m thankful we have extensive infrastructure and vehicles to get us around as quickly and easily as we do. But I know as well as anyone, life isn’t always a smooth road. In fact, I frequently look forward to take myself off the paved roads, onto the dusty back roads, and chart a course of adventure as I work to my own beat.