There's an interesting story in Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto about fixing a skyscraper problem that threatened the whole project - if memory serves it was moving too much. That was definitely a 'one-off' solution. It's used in the book as an example of how the automation of the building process freed up the real engineers to solve the specific problems to that site.
It was the Citicorp building in New York City. In 1978, a year after it was built, Diane Hartley (a student at the time) discovered that aerodynamic calculations of wind loads on the skyscraper had been vastly underestimated. She contacted William LeMessurier, the structural engineer, and he re-did the analysis considering quartering winds. When it became clear the building would structurally fail in the next big storm, emergency repairs were done, welders working in secret at night, on almost every floor, installing extra cross braces. The building was saved and became an engineering ethics example.
Diane Hartley got no credit for her rôle in saving the building until nearly twenty years later.
