[WalterBright]

My dad in the AF once saw that engineers devised an elaborate draining system so a highway could be built across a swamp. He suggested instead they bulldoze a berm and build the highway on that.

That reduced the cost by about 95%, and they adopted it.

Note that the civil engineers working on it all failed to see the simpler, vastly cheaper option.

[saagarjha]

Yes, it happens, and we love to see it here when it does. But I'm not sure that really qualifies what appears to be musings as anything beyond that.