What to Learn from Notre Dame's Rebirth

The rebuilding of Notre Dame, France’s 860-year-old monument to Gothic architecture and medieval Christianity, is a marvel of collectivist energy and efficiency. It is for this more than anything else that leaders should celebrate its reopening.

In the immediate aftermath of the building’s 2019 gutting through fire, President Macron astonished the world with an ambitious deadline: “I want this to be finished in five years,” he said.

For any leader, business, political or otherwise, who has experience overseeing large infrastructure projects, this was received with cynicism. Whether it is Scotland’s Parliament, the UK’s HS2 project, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, Modderfontein New City in South Africa, or Mexico City's Texcoco Airport, history is littered with failed, postponed, or grossly over-budget projects. This could have been France’s.?

Yet, after five and a half years and about US$900 million in donations, France (and Macron) has actually succeeded.

The vast project was split over 140 jobs, with each job put out to tender separately to avoid the use of subcontractors. In the end, 250 companies and 2,000 workers and artisans from all over France worked collaboratively; some of the 250 businesses involved were nationally recognised and others were tiny workshops with niche expertise.

Take the cathedral’s great organ. It is one of the largest in France, with over 100 stops and about 8,000 pipes, and was fortunately was unharmed. It did have to be cleansed of lead dust, however. Parts of the organ that were too big or too fragile to be moved were cleaned or replaced on site; the rest was dismantled and sent to three workshops in the Hérault, Corrèze and the Vaucluse areas of southern France, where restorers carefully dusted pipes, cleaned windchests that control the organ’s air flow, and redid its electric and pneumatic transmission system.?

Once the organ was reassembled, specialists harmonised it at nighttime—which proved challenging when scaffolding was altering the acoustics.

Elsewhere, it was a pleasure to read that skills once deemed as pre-industrial were of value.

Carpenters who hand-hewed beams used 60 or so long-handled axes and broadaxes that were forged manually in the eastern Alsace region with detailed specifications, down to the kind of markings the blades had to leave. One forge who housed carpenters were awestruck by the “emotion of carpenters bonding with axes”.?

One quote particularly struck me.?

“This profession disappeared almost entirely during the 20th century with industrialisation,” said Martin Claudel, one of the axe-makers, who trekked back and forth from his own workshop in Brittany. “Notre-Dame shined a big spotlight on it.”

In a world with scant examples of on-time, collaborative, skilled mega-projects, C-suite leaders would do well to study this case study and learn from its lessons.

Important GoFundMe announcement

A member of the HotTopics community, Cristina Melluzzi, has publicly shared a devastating update:?

"My son Luca, a senior in High School was tragically hit by a truck whilst crossing the street at a crosswalk on Monday, after returning from school on his way to the gym. The person who hit him did not stop and left my son in the middle of the road, unconscious. By some miracle, an off duty police officer and some other amazing citizens blocked the traffic with their cars whilst the emergency responders arrived. He suffered multiple seizures on the way to the hospital. He has sustained multiple brain bleeds including a subdural hematoma and multiple skull fractures. He has a traumatic brain injury that he will have to live with for the rest of his life."

We're asking the wider HT community for your help in supporting Luca and his family during this time. GoFundMe details can be found here.

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