The Forth Bridge is a famous railroad bridge in Scotland and is more than 125 years old. It needs painting to fend off rust. Albert Cherns, the late famous social scientist who founded the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, identified the Forth Bridge principle as part of the nine principles for designing a sociotechnical system. He also referred to this as “the principle of incompletion.” 

Until 2002 he Forth Bridge was never fully freshly painted—it was always incomplete. A posse of painters started at the Midlothian end, and by the time they reached the Fife end, the Midlothian end would require repainting. In Cherns’ words, “Design is a reiterative process. The closure of options opens new ones. At the end, we are back at the beginning. As soon as design is implemented, its consequences indicate the need for redesign.”

 …