April

“It's the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long term risks with short term solutions. What I've been describing here, the sort of underinvestment in infrastructure that leads to poor grades on an infrastructure report card is part of that fifth risk. What societies need instead, argues Lewis, is effective program management - all the actual boring work that needs to happen in the technologically complex world we live in. Building new facilities, with the exciting ribbon-cutting ceremonies that come with them, is a part of this work, but mostly it's having a checklist and a schedule and a cohort of trained staff who can carry out the routine inspections and maintenance of all the bridges in a region, with all of the funding and policy that entails in a program that is stable over a span of decades or longer.”
― Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works