Start Digging

The Big Dig, was the largest and most challenging highway project in the history of the United States whilst it was in operation.

The Central Artery/Tunnel Project aka the Big Dig began planning in 1982. It was designed to relieve congestion around Boston and specifically the I-93 highway. It would involve creating the Thomas P O’Neill Tunnel as well as the Ted Williams Tunnel, and Leonard P Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge.

The Big Dig was a project of such complexity that it has been likened to performing open heart surgery on a patient while the patient is wide awake. It required people and machinery to work in Boston’s narrow and cramped winding streets, some even dating back to pre-colonial days.

Challenges

There were many challenges, known, and unknown to the team before they started on the project. Not only did they have to deal with technical engineering issues, but they also ran into thousands of rats being displaced and wanting somewhere to go. Working through land that was used as a landfill, and even uncovering archaeological finds.

The first and most daunting of all the project’s Rubik’s Cube-like engineering challenges was how to build a wider tunnel under a narrower, already existing highway without having the highway collapse all while traffic flowed above.

To solve it they had to do three things.

Firstly, they figured out they had to create tunnel-wide horizontal braces in the tunnel below and then slowly cut away at the highway above’s metal struts. They would then slowly lower the struts onto the braces.

To help with the structural strength of the walls of the tunnels, they used the Slurry Wall Module. It is basically a liquid wall at first made from a mixture of bentonite and water. The benefits are that it did not allow groundwater to pass through, it doubled as a stabilizing wall, and it could be filled in with concrete later to support the wall loads.

They also had to figure out how to make the railway tracks not move while tunnelling underneath them. They settled on a relatively new technique where they would pump a brine mixture between the tracks. This drew heat from the soil and froze the ground.

Take Away

The people who worked on the Big Dig didn’t have all the answers when they started. They had a goal, and they knew they had to work some things out in the process.

We often want to have certainty with every step. We want a nice clean straightforward plan. Removing uncertainty makes us feel better but it also slows us down and limits us.

The Big Dig shows you don’t need to know everything to start. The act of starting will reveal some areas you need to think about and overcome.

The process of thinking about and overcoming challenges can produce breakthroughs that can be game changers going forward. If the plan is only full of known knowns then you have less chance for inspiration.

This doesn’t mean go head first foolheartedly, you still need to have a rough idea, you just don’t need all the details ironed out for the whole project, business, or piece of work. Some things will need to be very specific, others less so.

The challenge isn’t can you figure out how to come up with solutions, the challenge is can you start?

Start digging.