Let me give you an example from a current project I am working on.
When it comes to secondary escapeways underground, our standard for years has been a steel tube with a ladder inside of it. I have better than 700' of this style of ladder planned in our development drifting, and included in the costs which have been approved by the board. Out of the blue I get a phone call from an Australian company just coming into the US, who offers a similar product, but made out of plastic. Rather than a contractor with a specialized machine, it can be installed by a couple of miners and a winch. Meets all of the legislated safety requirements, and allows the escapeway to be installed faster, thereby providing our miners with a second means of escape sooner. It may require slight changes to my raise design, which as I have stated, isn't a big deal and happens regularly. Now that the holidays are over, I expect to see a quote shortly. If the cost is better, I will likely change my design. My motives are driven my cost and ease of installation. Is there something wrong with that?
As a professor of mine once said, anyone can build a bridge. You hire an engineer to avoid two possible outcomes. 1) They build it 30 times, and after 29 collapsed bridges one finally stands up. 2) They overbuild it to the extreme and waste all sorts of money in the process.
If you want #2 (which is what many are calling for), I could design it right now as a quadruple walled stainless steel pipeline with an impenetrable unobtanium coating 24" thick on each of the four walls, with gate valves every 5 feet designed to shut if there is a pressure drop anywhere along the line, cameras between the walls in case the sensors fail, and a massive secondary containment tank around the whole thing. Guess what? Now the project is uneconomic and none of you see a god damned red cent. An engineer with training and experience in this can build one just as safe for a fraction the cost.
Now excuse me while I memorize the Fibonacci sequence over a few beers.
That's the problem with cities, they're refuges for the weak, the fish that didn't evolve.
I don't want to google this - sounds like a thing that NSMB will be better at.