Governmental departments too often miss the mark in "proper business planning". The rest is just my rant.
------------ Certainly the structural engineers' designs and calculations will get review in Montreal, as will the inspectors and the contractors that put the overpass up which is to be expected to improve future construction, but there is something insidiously worse.
A government transportation department heard that concrete was falling from the overpass about 1 hour before the collapse. Now that is great news, right?
1=2E Did they send out crews to look (or were there no crews on the weekend)? 2=2E Did they shut down the highway & overpass? 3=2E Did they have a plan to divert traffic? 4=2E Was there even a crisis procedure to implement?The quote from Canada's CBC news was as follows:
"Transport Quebec spokeswoman Jos=E9e Seguin told the Canadian Press the overpass was built in 1970, but she didn't know when it was last inspected. She said the department heard about an hour before the accident that pieces of concrete were falling off the overpass. Transport Quebec then issued an advisory to some media, she said."
The inability of some governmental groups to properly run what they have under their control is something that ought to get fixed, but since it involves politics, that seems to limit what happens.
A=2E In Los Angeles, Martin Luther King hospital has been an operational wreck, and it has been that way for DECADES. Everyone who lives in So.Cal. knows that if you get in an auto wreck near MLK, you offer to pay the ambulance driver to take you ANYWHERE BUT MLK!
Why? MLK is run by the County Board of Supervisors. They are elected because they can smile, talk good and shake hands, not because they know ANYTHING about hospital management. MLK lost its Federal approval as a hospital allowed to get Federal funding recently. Elected officials should not run critical infrastructure. They should hire professionals and properly FUND IT, if they must "own it". The council person in MLK's (low income) district, shall we say, is a person who hands out favors, and MLK is viewed locally as a place for opportunists who get along with the supervisors to gain control, and that fueled anything but a professionally run hospital.
B=2E On the other side of the public coin in "business" was today's LATimes article on "Petrobas" the oil company in Brazil that is partially owned, and majority vote controlled by the Brazilian government, but the company is a public company with shares (depository receipts) traded on the NYSE. That is a partially government owned entity that runs right, grows and turns a profit.
Time for a change in government control of infrastructure, if I don't miss my Bet. The citizens are the losers. We need to vote the bastards out, and vote in people who put in proper business operating systems.
Rant Over - Bo