When U.S. engineer John Frank Stevens arrived in Panama in July 1905 to take over the American effort to construct the Panama Canal, he was appalled. The endeavor to build the transoceanic waterway already was a year old and had consumed more than $128 million. “I found no organization…no answerable head who might delegate authority…no cooperation existing between what might charitably be called the departments,” Stevens wrote, as reported in David McCullough’s watershed book “The Path Between the Seas.”
Stephens, who gained fame for supervising the construction of the Great Northern Railway over the Continental Divide in Washington state, brought work to a complete halt until the logistics were overhauled. “Digging is the least thing of all,” he said.