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Now as to the missing files, I would look wherever Big Dig landfill can be found perhaps the various filled quarries around Boston. Perhaps one of the islands in the harbor…

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As to the hard drives, sounds like a professional job so not likely any data will be recoverable…

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M.

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Be nice to see some of them come to light…

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m.

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However, in a project this size, document storage and filing is a HUGE job. If the docs are missing, it’s more likely they are buried in the huge amount of stuff generated by the project and will take time to dig up. Or accidently misplaced. I doubt any employee actually was ordered to scrub ANYthing.

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As to this: Big Dig officials discovered defects in a crucial metal support as they were pushing to wrap up construction of I-90 tunnel ceilings in 2001, but did not make substantial design changes amid a growing concern about the project’s escalating costs, secret documents obtained by the Herald reveal.

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Well, that would be at the request of client (the government), most likely. As I said, working on a civil infrastrtucture project is a sticky job. It’s often that the stuff you’d want to do, the client ignores your advice. In the end, you have to do what the client wants. What we need to find out is who made the final call not to upgrade the design or materials. That, I do not think, has been made apparent by anything unearthed thus far.

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I’m so sick of the media and politicians who are so eager to jump the gun and spit out accusations all over. There’s a huge amount of information to shift through. I still say let the goddamned investigation come up with some results first. It’s only been a few days for heaven’s sake.

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I’m looking forward (sarcastically) to seeing how Kerry Healey will attempt to tie the Big Dig problem to Deval Patrick (or whomever she runs against).

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M.
Smart Mass, Dumb Mass Wise(ass) commentary on Massachusetts politics

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Also, nothing in my post said anything about “management companies” getting rid of documents.  The missing documents stuff – which, again, is not coming from me – is specific to the situation Natsios found when he arrived at the Turnpike Authority.  And the document about the faulty clevises supposedly went both to Bechtel and to the Authority.

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Come on, Lynne.  Natsios said he “arrived to find “file cabinets had been emptied and computer hard drives had been ‘sand blasted so data could never be recovered from them, and so that the computers wouldn’t even turn on.’ ”  That’s not stuff being “buried” or “accidentally misplaced.”  Maybe Natsios is making it up.  I don’t know; I wasn’t there, and neither were you.  He was, and he’s a pretty honorable guy by all accounts.

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Bullshit.

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If your client wants to do something that is demonstratably unsafe, you don’t do it.  You cite engineering specs, manuals, expert opinion, whatever.  You show the client that it won’t work.

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If your client won’t yeild, insisting that you do the work, you do any of the following:  * Appeal to whichever safety/inspection panels exist  * Notify the newspapers  * Walk away from the project

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Building something that is unsafe is not excusable simply because the customer requested it.  Builders have a duty to build safe structures, or build none at all.

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Either the contractors (a) didn’t know it was unsafe, and should be held accountable for poor engineering and/or negligence, of (b) knew it was unsafe, and should be held accountable for knowing and willingfully putting people in direct danger with their work.  Either way, the contractors are wrong.

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Note: I write ‘builder’, but I acknowledge this may be an architect/engineer issue, or it may be a building issue.  I don’t know, and so I have no idea which contractor and/or subcontractors should be held accountable.  Certainly not everyone involved is at fault, but certainly some are.

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This might be a red herring… sometimes engineers allow steel to rust because just the outside layer rusts and preserves all the steel on the inside, assuming there’s plenty of strength left in what hasn’t rusted.

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I’m not a civil engineer but I used to break things to measure their strength, for a living.  Loud job.

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This is the Pike, not the CIA!

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The missing button on Frank’s poll – KERASIOTES!

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however there are several programs available that will wipe a hard drive and randomly toggle bits over and over again until the original material is unrecoverable. In effect, sand blasting the data…

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The point is that it takes forethought and experience to wipe a drive that clean of its data… It does not happen by accident. Even a “reformat” will not destroy the data (I’ve recovered many a (partial) file from reformatted disks…)

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M.