[valenterry]

The difference between software developement and "other forms of engineering" is that you can copy software rather easily, but you cannot copy a bridge. If you could engineering would have the same issues in estimation.

In fact, take any engineering project that cannot be copied (like a new, big, custom airport) and you'll quickly see how much worth those "classical engineering estimations" really are.

A mature developer cannot magically give a better estimation. What they can do is communicate better, understand the value of POCs and which parts of a project to tackle first to reduce uncertainty as early as possible, as well as correctly describing uncertantity (e.g. NOT with a single number).

[feoren]

> you can copy software rather easily, but you cannot copy a bridge

You can copy a bridge just as easily as you can copy software: just print another copy of the blueprints. Just change the header from the name of one project to another, and you're done with the engineering at that new site. What's that, the span length is different? The soil is different? The traffic patterns and weather patterns and political climate and regulations are different? Of course they are. And when you copy source code, the use case is different, the hardware is different, the database is different, the inputs are different, the client is different. Every engineering job is custom. Software and bridge. The two disciplines are not as different as you say.

Bridge engineering also undergoes an "agile" methodology as the plans are repeatedly changed during conversations with the client, discovery of new regulations, ground-truthing, etc. Remember: the outcome of engineering is plans, not a finished product.

You're talking about differences in constructing the thing, after the engineering is complete. That's largely irrelevant to the engineering cost.

[valenterry]

Now you have copied the blueprint, but not the bridge. (and before you complain that software is also just a blueprint, the difference is: in one case you estimate the blueprint and not its execution, in the other case both (or even just the execution)

[jajko]

A lot of delays in engineering projects are caused by various political pressures, changes coming in the middle for whatever reason, natural or other physical disasters/events impacting physical construction way more than software development. Or new regulations complicating things more than previously thought.