Over the last few weeks I have watched two remarkable PBS TV programs on the show “Nova”; “Building the Supership”, and another on the salvage of the “Costa Concordia”, that super ocean liner that ran aground in the Adriatic. Both of these programs document enormous engineering feats performed by Italian shipyards and naval architects.

The first is about the construction of an ocean liner, in itself, no big thing, we’ve been building big, expensive ships like this for well over a century. But this is the modern time, and ship construction is all automated now, done by computers and with skeleton crews. The dollar and the clock dominate everything, and it all has to be done timed to the minute. Huge components and subassemblies have to be brought in from other shipyards by barge, and installed during very brief windows in the construction cycle, often during very short scheduled breaks in the work before bulkheads or decks go into place, sometimes only hours long. One foul-up and the whole project gets thrown out of whack, off schedule and over budget. And the finished ship has to be launched and undergoing sea trials just hours before a new vessel’s construction begins in the main yard. Watching the show, you get the impression these guys do this routinely, and have got it down to a science. These shipyards run like assembly lines. And the line can’t stop because that propeller shaft balancing might be delayed a day or two. Everything has to go right the first time or the whole project seizes up.

The ship finishes its sea trials and testing, and steams into a harbor where passengers, stores and crew are arriving at the dock ready to join her on her maiden voyage. It’s timed that closely. The tickets had been on sale while the ship was still under construction! The whole thing is choreographed like a military operation.

The second show, the salvage job, is one of the most complex engineering projects ever conceived, and unlike the shipyard work on the other show, this is not meticulously planned and rehearsed ahead of time. It must be rushed and improvised, with very little planning, and certainly no long range prep. It involves working in a chaotic natural and very unstable environment, under severe time constraints. Hundreds of specialists from all over the world are involved, but one Italian company is coordinating the whole thing.

There’s a lot of high tech, computers and modern construction techniques involved in these projects, maybe not like a NASA mission, but the challenges and coordination employed are phenomenal. The first job an intricate ballet timed to the second and the dollar, the second a fierce assault put together haphazardly as it unfolds, under severe pressure from weather and environmental considerations. You get the impression that these guys do this all the time, and have it down pat.

Then it occurred to me. This is all being done by a relatively small and poor country, about the size of California. I’m not sure we could pull it off, we don’t build that many ships in this country any more, I think there’s only a couple of shipyards left in the US, and they are devoted to military vessels. I’m sure we could do this if we had to, but we would have to bootstrap this kind of routine construction at great expense and do it from scratch. As for the salvage of the Concordia, I doubt if we have the gear on standby and the trained crews ready to go that little tiny Italy does. Faced with similar challenges, I don’t think we could pull it off.

Sure, America is still capable of big projects, and highly expensive development and R&D jobs, but I don’t think we can do this kind of bread and butter heavy industrial work efficiently any more. We don’t have the industrial infrastructure. We have given up a lot of leadership in a lot of areas, probably because it “no longer makes sense economically”. Its a pretty sobering thought.

I have a cousin who recently retired as a shift supervisor on a nuclear power plant, and he agrees. He says they used to have training programs and staff development systems to maintain a fully qualified crew of workers on hand and ready, but now when an emergency repair or even a scheduled upgrade must be done, they have to bring in talent from overseas, or call in old-timers from retirement. He says they are continuously trying to get him to come back as a part-time consultant, to conduct classes and organize training programs, because there is no longer anyone on staff tasked to do this as a part of everyday management. And the people qualified to do this kind of work are not being replaced as they die, or retire.

He jokingly refers to the process of a major component replacement or system upgrade, or even prep for a routine government inspection. “We blow on this big ram’s horn and out of the mountains of Appalachia all these retired old timers in coveralls and long beards, carrying tool boxes, come shuffling out of the hollers demanding outrageous overtime pay. And every year there seem to be less and less of them.”