Mass Transit’s editorial mission is to serve as a best practices magazine for the North American transit industry. What this means is that our content is heavily focused on sharing the industry’s successes. Who doesn’t like reading about a group of professionals who banded together to develop a solution that enhanced service, expanded a network or helped bridge a gap between opportunity and need.
However, a more difficult story to share is one where things don’t go as planned. They may flat out fail initially but lessons and value exist in failure just as much as success. And failure may be too strong of a word, merely non-successes.
We’ve all heard the quote attributed to Thomas Edison that he did not fail to do something 10,000 times, but successfully found 10,000 ways to not do something.
A quick observation of our story analytics this summer would appear to show a surplus of projects that look to have encountered setbacks in their progress. As of this writing, the Hudson River Tunnel project is estimated to be delayed by three years and has reportedly seen its costs increase by $2 billion; the eight-mile Valley Line Southeast light-rail project in Edmonton, Alberta, is delayed because of cracks in 40 percent of the project’s elevated guideways and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has been directed by the Federal Transit Administration to get its safety culture and practices in order following a string of high profile incidents. These are by no means failures, but certainly qualify as significant challenges.
What to do when you’re in the thick of it? I think back to former Crossrail Limited CEO Mark Wild’s speech at APTA Rail in June on his experience in delivering the Elizabeth Line, where he told attendees large projects are not relay races, they are tough mudders. Be prepared to get dirty.
While Wild admitted there was embarrassment surrounding cost overruns and project delays, he offered attendees several key points on where the Elizabeth Line project could have done better. These lessons learned began with the realization that the project was thought of as sequential when it should have been viewed as an epic systems project. His perspectives included his methods toward addressing risk and uncertainty, leaning toward modularity rather than bespoke elements, system integration work and an approach that promoted transparency and clear governance.
The Elizabeth Line opened in May 2022 and the dissection performed to understand how things could have developed and been executed upon in a smoother fashion is separate kind of achievement and one I and, I hope, project managers were grateful to learn from.
When things go sideways, while uncomfortable to experience, there can be a valuable learning experience for project stakeholders, as well as the greater industry.
