Ninth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Construction of high dams requires complex coordination of human labor, natural resource extraction, and landscape alterations over time. This paper explores the means and impacts of construction timeline acceleration for a high profile New Deal Era project, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Norris Dam. Fast-tracking of ‘The Norris Project’ generated a politically critical flow of positive public-relation materials during the two years prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1936 re-election campaign (from ‘July 17, 1934 to June 1936’ p275 The Norris Report). To achieve this timeline, TVA staff reverse-engineered cement, aggregate, and concrete transport, handling, mixing, and placement, as well as resource extraction and processing workflows from previous Army Corp of Engineers projects they worked on— Madden Dam, Panama Canal Zone and Boulder (Hoover) Dam, Nevada USA. Labor, material and production targets developed in this exercise were implemented at the Norris Project using four daily work shifts. Norris managers then used methods similar to those described in Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management to identify time-inefficiencies. Iterative adjustment and time-testing of workflows continued until both speed of production and quality of concrete were effectively maximized. Interesting facets of ‘The Norris Project’ include on-site quarrying and processing of aggregates and sand, and pursuit of extreme time-efficiency. References include TVA reports and archive materials, as well as the considerable literature available on modern-era time-management. Given format constraints, address of social and environmental consequences of timeline acceleration are minimized, however the author welcomes inclusion of these concerns in post-presentation discussion.