I read an article in ENR that opened with:

As California Department of Transportation Construction Manager Douglas Coe tells it, the key to success on a very complicated seismic retrofit of the Antioch Toll Bridge is the mastering of the three B’s – birds, bearings and bracing.

Now I understand that a seismic retrofit for a bridge would involve some work on the bridge bearings and the bracing structure, but why did birds top the challenge list?

Turns out that Caltrans knew that Barn Owls, House Finches, Cliff Swallows, Barn Swallows and Northern Mockingbirds all build nests on the bridge between February and September. If a nest is built and eggs laid, then all work has to stop for the 6 to 12 weeks till the eggs hatch and birdies fly away.

So a $35M US project halts, costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a barn swallow egg? I’m wondering who has the bird brain in this scenario. How have we gotten to the place where this behavior makes sense?

I’m in the process of awarding a large site package and talking to several older estimators (my age) about the project details. We easily track onto how things were in construction and how they are now. The increase in silly rules and paperwork dominates those conversations. Can our society ever move away from special interest initiatives and back toward common sense?