By Michael Pearsall, P.Eng., CVS, CVM, FICE, FEC
I just returned from the joint meeting of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standing Committee on Environment (SCOE) and Subcommittee on Design (SCOD) in Des Moines, Iowa.
It was a busy week with some (but not enough) mention of Value Engineering. I think it was very important that in the closing summary of priority issues and common concerns the priority to consider value engineering in performance based practical design and possibly combine processes made the list. I was pleased to see that despite the Technical Committee ending Value Engineering is still on the minds of AASHTO members. Not to mention my own personal feeling that you can’t really do practical design any better way than with VE. I was at another event earlier this year where a senior State executive stood at the front of the room and as part of his keynote said they were embracing practical design as they wanted to get 80% of the benefit at 20% of the cost. Immediately I saw the connection to VE, and in particular, target-costing.
One of the non-VE highlights though for myself and others involved a 1920 Model T Ford. The model T is a great historic example of target-costing and I will get back to that.
On Tuesday afternoon, there was the opportunity to experience an automated vehicle demonstration. The good folks in Iowa had arranged for some of us to be bussed to the local pioneer village (Iowa’s Living History Farm) where we were met by researchers from the University of Iowa with their black Volvo P90 and white Tesla Model S.
Living History Farm also graciously brought out their 1920 Model T for comparison and rides. This car, of course, was finished in black paint. Most people are familiar with the famous quote from Henry Ford when he said you could have your Model T in any colour you wanted as long as it was black.
Many people falsely think that all Model T’s were black. The reality is that originally Model T’s came in many different colours – the oldest one I have seen was actually bright red (and for the first four years, black wasn’t even an option). So why did they end up all black?
Henry Ford was a brilliant industrialist, and the colour choice actually came down to mainly time. Ford found that of the paints they used back then, the black paint dried the quickest. The faster the paint dried, the more cars could be produced (not to mention the savings in time and money of only stocking one paint colour and not having to switch colours). Even at that various black paints were chosen for different parts depending on their drying times.
Of course, paint technology has improved over the years and along with customer expectations we have seen periods with an explosion of automotive colour. However, currently we are seeing less and less colour variation again.
Looking at the driveways down my street and at traffic on my drive into work, I cannot help but notice how many white vehicles there are. On one particular day, my wife’s red vehicle was the only one in a driveway on our street that wasn’t white.
Black is still popular today, but the reality is that white is now the most produced colour and not because it dries any quicker.
I asked an old experienced car dealer about this and his response was “Nobody really likes a white vehicle, but nobody really hates it either, so they are good for stock as people will accept them.” He went on to tell me how people may either really love or hate a red or green vehicle and not make a purchase off the lot if that is all they have, but they can always get people to accept white.
Most fleet vehicles are white. According to our fleet staff, that is a cost savings measure as they can re-sell white vehicles easier. I also found out that the advent of vehicle wraps have pushed this along, as white is easier to use as a background when you are doing a vehicle wrap.
Now personally as an aside, I really hate white vehicles – it would always be my last choice. However, the reality is I have owned many white vehicles over the years and recently bought another one even though I went out very specifically looking for red or blue.
It didn’t escape my observation the irony that the two test vehicles were black and white, nor that the Tesla Model S naming is close to the Ford Model T and both are historic milestones.
So, this brings me back to target-costing and practical design. Henry Ford wanted to get a Model T in every driveway, but he knew that he couldn’t do that at the price-point where the average car was selling in 1908. Ford used various techniques (including the black paint) to allow the price of the Model T to be lowered from $850 in 1908 to less than $300 in 1925. This was in fact a form of target-costing as his premise was quoted as “…large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one…”
When it comes to highway projects and practical design, we can use target costing and I have done this on a number of projects. If you are not up to speed on using target costing with value engineering for highway projects, I strongly suggest you visit the SAVE International bookstore where there are some good references available. You can also check out some past conference/summit proceedings, as there are some good resources available to you in past presentations on this topic.
Here’s some parting trivia for the day you can impress your friends with. Many people credit the 1958 Chrysler Imperial as the start of automated vehicles with their “electronic” cruise-control (incidentally called auto-pilot in their brochures, the same as Tesla calls their automated system on the Model S). However, what many people may not know is that the Model T actually had its own form of auto-pilot if you set the throttle and spark levers carefully.
I hope to see many of you in Philadelphia at the end of August. The 2017 Value Summit not only promises to be an excellent networking and learning opportunity, but it is also one of the few remaining opportunities we have to get together and further the practice. Based on how much fun we had at the 2016 Value Summit, I am looking forward to seeing everyone again.
Until the next issue, I would like to continue to encourage any transportation professional out there who would like to share their stories to contact me mike.pearsall@ontario.ca.
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