Gotta go, event to speak at…

Good day my good friend.

No nonsense today. Just links for you.

James

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Reducing construction costs is hard, but may be necessary to cater for population growth

As the engineers among you know, building things is hard. Very hard. And very expensive. Building new things should be done right, but its also important – if only so the public gets more “bang for their buck” – that it is done so efficiently. Work by the Brookings Institute recommends that construction projects be measured against an efficiency benchmark, whilst also warning against the fact that saving a few quid on the construction costs may not be efficient in cost terms over the lifetime of the asset.

If we take the assumption that the world’s population will grow as forecast, more infrastructure will be needed if we are to achieve a low carbon future, although researchers argue that infrastructure construction will need to be restrained also to reduce carbon emissions. The costs of sustainable transport infrastructure construction, such as railways, can be brought under control through having a pipeline of projects, smarter commissioning of works, and supply chain integration. But there is also a need to be dynamic in construction, as new opportunities come to light – such as a technology or process improvement – that could reduce costs. In summary, cost control is a bit of a dark art, but providing certainty helps a lot.

Thinking aloud could help us to understand the experience of transport users better

I do get somewhat hesitant when people say “I say what I think” or “being brutally honest is best.” My experience is that they tend to favour the brutal over the honest. But saying what you think was used in a research project by McIlroy et al to understand differences in the user experience of different road users as they navigated a route through a city. So what were the results?

It was clear from the verbalisations made by participants that each of the groups included had differing concerns and needs, with cyclists referring more to road surface quality and road positioning, motorcyclists concerned more with vigilant observation, and car drivers primarily focussed on the physical task of controlling their vehicle.

This adds an interesting dimension to quantitative research, which tends to show that different user groups think radically differently things to what this research states when we ask them about their experiences. Plus the thought of dedicated researchers having to analyse the colourful language of British road users (from personal experience, it is very colourful) does make me chuckle.

Random things

You know the drill by now.

• These Parents Built a School App. Then the City Called the Cops (Wired)

• Metaverse: five things to know – and what it could mean for you (The Conversation)

• Ecuador plans achieving mass electromobility by 2040 (BN Americas)

• Two-thirds of local authorities have no EV charging plans (Transport Network)

• Government must learn from HS2 megaproject mistakes, says thinktank (Construction News)

Interesting things

This is another visual story, this time about who gets to breathe the clean air in New Delhi produced by the New York Times. Spoiler alert: it’s not good for the kid who lives in the slums.

If you do nothing else today, do this

Check out Heat Street, which is a great tool to help plan out improvements to energy efficiency at the street level. UK only.