The real bridge to nowhere...

Several years ago, members of the Alaskan congressional delegation helped secure federal funding for a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska (the state's southeasternmost major city) to Gravina Island.  At the time, there were only 50 Alaskans who lived on Gravina Island.  So why, do you ask, would anyone propose to build a bridge (with projected costs around $398 million) to an island with a population that small?  The Ketchikan International Airport is also located on Gravina Island.  Before the proposed bridge, passengers would have to travel to Gravina Island to reach home - or the airport - by ferry.  The proposed spending bill encountered significant opposition and became a symbol for so-called "pork barrel" spending.  The "Bridge to Nowhere" even found its way into the 2008 Presidential election campaign, when the Republican nominee for Vice President, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, told a crowd on August 29, 2008,"I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere!"  Interestingly enough, the Alaskan government continued work on the Gravina Island Highway, which would have connected with the proposed bridge, at a cost of over $25 million.  The road has now become known locally as the "road to nowhere."

There is a perhaps less famous "Bridge to Nowhere" that I find more interesting.  There is an old bridge in the city of Choluteca, Honduras that was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1935 and 1937 that was considered one of the greatest works of architecture in all of Honduras.  The bridge was modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.  The bridge is part of a major thoroughfare that controls traffic flow from Guatemela to Panama.  At some point in the early 1990's, the Honduran government recognized that a second bridge was necessary to help accomodate the increasing amount of traffic in the city of Choluteca along this major thoroughfare.  The new Choluteca Bridge, known as the "Bridge of Rising Sun" was built by a Japanese construction company beginning in 1996 and was completed in 1998.  

Hurricane Mitch is the second deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record, causing over 11,000 deaths in 1998, both from the storm itself and the floods that occurred in its aftermath.  Seven thousand people died in Honduras, where much of the flooding occurred.  Aside from the catatrophic number of deaths, the President of Honduras claimed that the storm's damage set the economic development in Honduras back at least fifty years.  The storm wrecked about 35,000 houses and damaged another 50,000, leaving up to 1.5 million people homeless (about 20 percent of the country's population).

The storm and flooding caused over $6 billion in damages across Latin America.  The country of Honduras was hit particularly hard, with just over $2 billion in damages alone, most of which was due to ruined crops and damage to transportation infrastructure.  Many of the roads and bridges across the country were either heavily damaged or destroyed, including the Old Choluteca Bridge above.  However, the new "Bridge of Rising Sun" survived the storm completely intact.  Unfortunately, while the bridge itself was in near perfect condition, the roads on either end of the bridge were completely destroyed.  As a matter of fact, the roads had completely vanished without a trace.  The Choluteca River, which was over 100 meters at the bridge, had carved itself a new channel during the massive flooding caused by the hurricane and completely re-routed itself.  The bridge no longer crossed the river!  Here is a picture of the bridge in the aftermath of the hurricane:

As you can see, the new Choluteca Bridge had truly become a "Bridge to Nowhere."  The bridge has become a perfect metaphor  for dealing with the constantly changing dynamics of the world we live in today.  Admittedly, the fact that the bridge withstood a category V hurricane and a "once in a generation" flood of biblical proportions is an impressive feat of engineering, particularly when so many other bridges and structures collapsed.  Moreover, I would bet that most engineers don't factor in such a rare occurence as a river completely changing its path - it is a completely unexpected kind of event!

High Reliability Organizations are perfectly positioned to manage these rare, unexpected, "Black Swan" kinds of events.  Just consider the title of one of the earliest and by far the best book on High Reliability Organizations HROs) - at least in my opinion - by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe - Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World.  I have written a number of blog posts in the past on HRO's, so I won't go in too much detail here.  Suffice it to say that HROs are perfectly positioned to deal with "Bridge to Nowhere" kinds of events because they are:

1. Preoccupied with failure

2. Reluctant to simplify

3. Sensitive to operations

4. Committed to resilience

5. Defer to the experts

Organizations may never have to deal with an incident even remotely close to what the city of Choluteca had to deal with following Hurricane Mitch.  Regardless, learning how other organizations have dealt with similar issues, or better yet, adopting many of the principles that these organizations followed, will help position your organization to deal with any variety of these unexpected, rare events.  I will end this post, as I frequently do, with a quote, this one from Senator Elizabeth Warren.  She said, "Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected."  Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts said, "A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens."  Herein lies the essence of high reliability.