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No one thinks about moving the starting or ending point of the bridge midway through construction. […] But Hillel interviewed a civil engineer who said that they had to move a bridge!

My local Department Of Transportation has this notice on the info page of the bridge construction project nearest to me:

“This is a design-build project, meaning the design and construction will happen simultaneously, which allows DOT and the contractor to include the most innovative and current construction solutions while ensuring a quality product.”

I... that's... surely there's more context here? Nice work if you can get it, I guess!

Well, working in software, I pretty much only have experience doing design-build work; I’ve never designed something in it’s entirety before building it (except maybe for a touch of hardware design, but even that is iterated and prototyped and tested and simulated…). I took this DOT page as a sign that maybe construction is becoming more like software over time, and I can no longer wax philosophical at cocktail parties about how they’re different.

A little context perhaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design–build

OK that all helped a lot. Thank you

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