Comment by heleninboodler

I once chatted with the foreman of a skyscraper construction project who happened to always be standing out on the street near my office where I regularly got coffee, and I got to ask him a bunch of questions about the process. It was a lot of "what's that guy up there doing with that giant temporary platform" and "why do they X" kind of stuff, but when I was asking about the crane that was eventually going to have to be doubled in height when the building got too tall, he blew me away with the precision and confidence about that progress. "That will get jumped up on Memorial Day" he said, and that was several months away. I asked him how he could be so certain, and he explained that they build one floor per week, and the various trades (concrete, framing, electrical, plumbing, finish) each worked on one floor at a time in a pipelined fashion. So while concrete is working on the 19th floor, framing is working on 18, plumbing on 17, etc. When I asked what happens if one of those trades doesn't finish within their week, he looked at me like I was absolutely insane. "That doesn't happen. It can't. They have a week." Sure enough, the crane got taller on Memorial Day. After hearing that explanation it was fascinating to watch the progress and confirm that every tuesday, they'd start pouring concrete on the next floor up.

Coming from a software perspective, I thought this was pretty impressive. When was the last time anyone told you something was going to take a week and it actually took a week? :D

BTW, to answer a question about the crane, there are regulations limiting the crane to a specific height which change once the building gets tall enough to support having the crane bolted to the side of it.