Fern Hollow Framework: Demolish & Dispose vs. Preserve & Protect
How was Pittsburgh's Fern Hollow Bridge reconstructed so quickly?
A) Local and state government got out of the way and used emergency declarations to remove red tape that would have normally caused a project like this to take 3-4 years;
B) The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allowed PennDOT to quickly dedicate $25.3 million in federal funds to the Fern Hollow project without impacting other regional infrastructure needs; or
C) The original bridge was hauled out of the way, which meant the contractor had extra space to work and didn't have to worry about maintaining traffic flow during construction.
Regardless of how much answers 'A' and 'B' factored into the bridge's rapid reconstruction, it's answer 'C' that is most relevant as you kick off the new year.
Why?
Because you and your teams are unwittingly wasting time, energy, and money maintaining "bridges" that need to be demolished and disposed of.
Does that truth mean that you should proactively implode every bridge/process/plan/relationship/etc. that is slowing down progress in other areas? Of course not.
Does that truth mean that recklessly laying people off, burning things to the ground to expedite rebuilding, and "ripping off band-aids" should be a default approach to change management? Nope.
Does that truth mean that you should throw away all the cookies and candy and junk food and soda and booze in your house so that you can adhere to your 2023 dietary resolutions? Well, maybe.
But one thing that truth definitely means is that you should constantly ask yourself—and those around you—this simple question:
"What would it look like if that [bridge] were blown up and hauled away?"
“Reconstruction of the bridge was able to move so quickly thanks to emergency declarations from the city of Pittsburgh and the state of Pennsylvania, said Cowan. He said the declarations ‘saved years in the project delivery process but has minimal impact on the actual construction.’”
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Happy New Year and welcome to the energy detox, where today we're going to take some lessons from the relatively rapid reconstruction of Pittsburgh's Fern hollow bridge to help you one make better decisions as a leader as you navigate the new year to help you to enhance the odds that whatever new year's resolutions you may have made will actually stick this year, and three to help frame or reframe some of the ongoing conversations about the energy transition. And as a quick refresher, for those of you who might not recall the fern hollow Bridge, which made national headlines last year, this bridge here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, collapsed unexpectedly January of 2022. Fortunately, it was a snowy morning, there wasn't as much traffic as there normally would have been around 630 In the morning when the bridge collapsed. So injuries were minimal. The number of people on the bridge were minimal. And, again, all toll the situation could have been far, far worse. But why was this in the national news? Well, one, of course, bridges typically don't collapse out of the blue here in United States, and to President Biden was already scheduled to come to Pittsburgh several hours after this bridge had collapsed. And of course, while that added fuel to the conspiracy theorists who would have argued that Well, this was quite a coincidence, right? President Biden was coming to talk about his infrastructure bill to tout all of the benefits of his infrastructure bill. And what happens a couple of hours before his arrival. Well, a bridge collapse. So again, this made national news, and it continued to make national news. If for no other reason, then this bridge has been reconstructed. Already, less than one year after its collapse. It's open to traffic, albeit not all liens are open yet. But still, this is a significant change, if you will, or a significant deviation from what you might expect for a project of this scope. Because this wasn't just some small little crossing this span was over 100 feet, maybe 150 feet long, over 100 feet off the ground. So again, this was not insignificant. But this all begs the question, well, how why was this bridge reconstructed so fast relative to what you might expect for a project like this. And while and President Biden and others might tout the government's involvement and the influx of cash and all of these other things, and and I will say that the government's role in this being completed so fast is actually more due to the fact that a lot of the red tape was removed, and a lot of the bureaucracy that would have normally been in place when it came to bidding and decisions and different things. were gone, were erased for the purpose of reconstructing this bridge so quickly. So again, does government have a role in the fact that this bridge was reconstructed, so quickly share, but one of the most significant things from a practical standpoint is that the existing bridge was gone. It wasn't in the way. So when the contractor had to go about the business of reconstructing this bridge, the contractor did not have to worry about preserving existing traffic flows on a bridge right next to it, this contractor didn't have to worry about having limited space to reconstruct a bridge right next to one while keeping the existing bridge in place in service before it would inevitably be demolished. And the new bridge would be placed in service, which is typical of a lot of bridge constructions. Typically, you're constructing a new bridge when the other one is there right next to it. But in this case, that wasn't, that wasn't an option. That would that wasn't a consideration. And so the contractor had a little bit more freedom. And so why, why, why did this reason stick out in my mind? Well, because it parallels very nicely when I see all the time when it comes to some of the approaches some of the mindsets that hold leaders back. And that is leaders who don't recognize that there are opportunities to demolish or collapse and dispose of whatever existing processes are in place, whatever existing meetings are in place, whatever existing relationships are in place that aren't doing any good that are holding them back from making progress and a reasonable amount of time and significant amount of time and in a sustainable manner. Now, obviously, when it comes to things like bridges, it's not always practical to simply demolish an existing bridge and have it out of service and cause all of the various chaos from a traffic standpoint that may be maybe caused by such a demolition. But in this case, again, the contractor was able to take advantage of this opportunity. So why why do I bring this up today? Why don't we bring this up as the first episode of 2023? Well, because as we enter a new year, a lot of people of course, are making resolutions, right? You know, it's 2023 Lots of resolutions. But as you make resolutions or as you make decisions about yourself and your business and your team. A very simple thing you need to be asking yourself is do you have opportunities to demand relish and dispose of existing infrastructure, if you will, figurative infrastructure or literal depending on your scope of your role, if you will, or should you be leaning towards a preservation approach to protecting approach? And there's no one answer, of course, and one of the mistakes that a lot of individuals make is that they kind of paint themselves into one approach or another right, rip the band aid off here on the left side, demolish and dispose and, and move on, sink or swim, whatever analogy you want to throw in there. And some leaders are more cautious. Some leaders are pegged as being more cautious. And what I see as a leadership coach is that there's a lot of leaders who think that they're more in the quick decision, strong decision, demolish and dispose. But in reality, they spend a lot more time on the right side here. And a lot of times it's unconscious, they don't realize that they're keeping up an existing bridge, so that things can continue flowing back and forth. They don't realize that it's an option to collapse that bridge to demolish that bridge, they don't ask themselves what it would look like. If those existing connections, relationships, policies, procedures, business plans, whatever, are tossed out the window, they don't ask that question of, hey, how would it feel if I didn't have to work alongside this existing bridge in order to construct the new bridge? It's a very simple question. It's a question or that type of question that I get to ask a lot. And far too many individuals simply don't ask that question. Because again, conscious leadership isn't about adhering to one philosophy or another. That is the antithesis of conscious leadership. Of course, conscious leadership is making a decision in that moment for that particular situation. But you, as a leader need to ask yourself, are you at least exploring the demolition opportunity? Or conversely, are you always leaning towards preservation and protection? And certainly in the energy industry? That is a big question as we entertain conversations about the so called energy transition. Which brings us to the second theme today. So again, we talked about New Year's resolutions and starting fresh, whether it's within a company or whether it's you as an individual, but what about the energy transition? What about all of the decisions that are made regarding the future of energy, the future of green energy, or renewable energy, because again, how many conversations are dominated by this false choice between demolishing and disposing of what's in place, particularly fossil fuel infrastructure, and preserving what's already in place. And there's sort of a two fold preservation approach here. One is preserving existing infrastructure, but the other is preservation of planet Earth. And again, if you're well versed, or you've been exposed to conversations led by the likes of Alex Epstein or Doran Lumbergh, or Michael Shellenberger, a lot of these thinkers point out the negative consequences to to put it lightly of a false approach to preservation to preserving the status quo. And whether that is preserving Earth and its natural state, which of course is not terribly hospitable to human beings, or preserving the current state of our infrastructure, whether it's bridges, roads, energy, etc. Both of those preservation examples can be damaging can be harmful to us, human beings are very existence. And so you need to look at this more consciously, more openly, what things can be demolished? What can't things can be blown up and disposed of, and which things need to be preserved? Again, it's a simple question, but as you entertain conversations about the energy transition, are you leaning too far one way or the other? Are you leaning towards a demolition approach, where the rush to move towards electric vehicles will have unintended consequences? Are you running away from this idea of preserving the benefits of the internal combustion engine towards this idea of demolishing fossil fuels, demolishing the use of oil, gasoline, and diesel and all of its benefits to the detriment of people, your stakeholders, your ubiquitous stakeholders, whatever they are, whoever they look like, that is the question that's underlying this, this energy conversation as we move forward. And again, the point of this episode of the energy talks is not to go too far into detail, but to remember if you forget about the front hollow bridge to at least remember that you have
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this false dichotomy at play. The answer might be in between but are you allowing yourself to fall into one camp or the other regardless of what your your your biases might be? And the third and final example of this demolish and dispose versus preserve and protect mentality approach framework, if you will, is the idea of PPE, personal protective equipment. And this is a topic that we've talked about multiple times on the energy detox, but it bears repeating today, because again, PPE is a perfect example of something that can be misconstrued. Personal Protective Equipment is not designed solely to protect and preserve the status quo. It's designed to protect human beings as they actually accomplish something not to protect things at the expense of progress. PPE needs to be practical. And that's the point of the conversation today. Are there practical things that you can be doing to get demolished and dispose of existing policies, procedure, relationships, infrastructure, if you will? Are there practical things that are hindering your progress, because PPE, if not designed properly, or taken to its extreme, would hinder progress, right, a pair of mittens that would protect your hands will sure they might, you know, leather, mittens are going to protect your hands. But if your job is to work, and to you know, rely on your dexterity and, and work with small tools, while again, that's not gonna work, you need PPE that's going to allow you to make progress. And again, not gonna expand on this, I'll throw some links in the show notes for some some further conversations on this. But as you head into the new year, you want to make sure that you alone as an individual are not embracing this false preservation false protection mindset. And in turn, encouraging your teams consciously or unconsciously, to also adapt this false sense of PPE, which can lead to limited progress. And ironically, in some cases, can actually lead to more harm if the PPE is not designed for the job at hand. So with all of that being said, I want to wish you happy new year as you can try to live out your Year's Resolutions four days into the new year here. I encourage you to look for some of the existing bridges, if you will, that are still standing that are still connecting you to things that you don't need to be connected to that are holding you back. Are some things meant to be incremental. Sure. Do you want to preserve some foundation to build upon, of course, but ask yourself, what are the things that are holding you back from progress and can they be not just demolished but disposed of out of sight, out of mind, giving you the room, the mental room, the physical room, the the budgetary room to do what needs to be done in 2023 to make a difference? So with that, thank you as always, for your time once again, I hope you have a very happy new year and a great rest of the week.