Build it Bigger

I was watching the Science Channel show Build it Bigger recently.  The show was about the process of designing and building a VERY large and unique hotel and entertainment complex in the Middle East.  It was amazing to watch the show at many levels.  What came out of it for me were the following lessons:

• Strategic design goals and a solid design process can influence a lot and enable accomplishment of incredible, seemingly impossible feats.
• Computer modeling is a very powerful tool for enabling design process and testing goal and design scenario’s feasibility.
• Significant cost and time savings can be obtained by setting high expectations and imposing “impossible” constraints (engineering/design, time and cost) from the onset.
• Prefabrication and modularization have significant impact on time-lines and cost-lines.
• Motivated by the challenge (tough goals and tight constraints), very smart, strategic-thinking, highly creative people can accomplish and produce incredible things much faster and cheaper than us “dummies”J.
• Almost nothing is impossible.

In the show, these folks built a monster size, first of a kind, and HIGHLY unique structure in something like 24 months (in 30-40% less time/cost than usual I’d guess).  This thing structure is amazing!!!

As a result of watching the show, a number of pondering items emerged that you may be interested in considering:

• How can some of the structural engineering approaches used in this project be applied to your business or area?
• Is there a way you can follow their approach at home or at work?
  • What could be “prefabricated”, “modularized”, etc.?
  • What high expectations can you set for self or others that would drive creativity and unique design features and functions?
  • How many constraints can you place on what you are trying to do?

I hope this will give you something unique to think about and inspire higher creativity in your endeavors.  Check the show if your get a chance — I am sure they will replay it again one day.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO