“What is death? One step further into calm and two perhaps into silence. No, it is not life I regret, but the ruin of my plans, which were so long in devising and so laborious to construct.”

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Don’t we all feel this way about our work?? I just finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo and it is one of my new favorite books. The plot has everything – excitement, despair, humor, love, surprises, good people, bad people, and most of all, an elaborate, well-orchestrated plot for revenge. Page after page, we see the Count’s tremendous foresight and creative strategies (don’t worry; I have no plans for vengence). Stepping back into the world of non-fiction, this same message of proper planning and due diligence applies when undertaking major construction projects.

Since shortly after the start of the Great Recession, virtually every project owner has welcomed – and in some cases dreaded – the extreme low-bid environment we see today. Unprecedented in living memory, bids 20 to 30 percent below the engineer’s estimate are quite commonplace. 40 percent is not all that rare, and 50 percent [...]