The bridge is one of the massive engineering projects Mr. Macaulay seeks to demystify in his new book, "Building Big" (Houghton Mifflin, $30), and in a five-part public television series of the same name that begins on Tuesday.
With massive engineering projects carried out in cold regions where freeze-thaw processes can affect the mechanical properties of rock material, the temporal variation of geotechnical stability is highly concerned.
At the centre of this are people like Wudinesh and her husband, who head one of the government's celebrated "model families" and are footsoldiers in a massive social engineering project to redefine healthy behaviour.
The situation is dire enough that China is investing in a massive public engineering project to move water from the South to the North.
The massive London civil engineering projects of the mid-19th century the railways, the sewer system and from the 1860s the precursors to the London Underground often necessitated the demolition of existing churchyards.
The classic one is to terraform a nearby Earth-like object, by using massive geo-engineering projects or bio-domes to create a lunar or Martian metropolis.
The problem with massive re-engineering projects such as the one described by Pandit in a highly anticipated investor presentation Friday is that they tend to distract and demoralize employees.
