Most expensive rail project per mile?

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#3311012 20-Nov-2024 16:04

I think that's rubbish. A government department build will face the same problems as a private build when it comes to modern cost overheads. They don't escape any of the regulations and laws and overheads the private infrastructure builders are facing. You cannot compare the environment enjoyed by 1950's government builds to that we have today.

fastbike

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#3311017 20-Nov-2024 16:10

johno1234:

I think that's rubbish. A government department build will face the same problems as a private build when it comes to modern cost overheads. They don't escape any of the regulations and laws and overheads the private infrastructure builders are facing. You cannot compare the environment enjoyed by 1950's government builds to that we have today.

Think what you like. As an example we need to be building a major hospital every 5 years or so to keep up with population growth, changes in health tech, and aging infrastructure. With the backlog that's probably one every three years for the next twenty years. We do not need a new design for each one. The expertise gained by design / build of the Chch hospital disappeared after the project was finished in 2016. Then it had to be reassembled for Dunedin in 2021, which has become a shambles. And the idiots in charge of the govt finances when Chch hospital was commissioned nick-and-dimed the project and shaved $100M by not building the third tower even though modelling showed it was needed. It's now being added with much disruption at 3 x the price.

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Handle9

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#3311018 20-Nov-2024 16:12

fastbike:

johno1234:

I think that's rubbish. A government department build will face the same problems as a private build when it comes to modern cost overheads. They don't escape any of the regulations and laws and overheads the private infrastructure builders are facing. You cannot compare the environment enjoyed by 1950's government builds to that we have today.

Think what you like. As an example we need to be building a major hospital every 5 years or so to keep up with population growth, changes in health tech, and aging infrastructure. With the backlog that's probably one every three years for the next twenty years. We do not need a new design for each one.

Lol.

Benoire

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#3311021 20-Nov-2024 16:17

johno1234:

I think that's rubbish. A government department build will face the same problems as a private build when it comes to modern cost overheads. They don't escape any of the regulations and laws and overheads the private infrastructure builders are facing. You cannot compare the environment enjoyed by 1950's government builds to that we have today.

I work in the construction industry, specifically transport in a large road controlling authority as the design manager, and costs are predominately construction related and on the side of material and product supply. A large scale project will generally only cost 10-15% for design to IFC with the remaining 85% in the construction phase. Whilst there are cost savings to be had by in house design for certain activities, in house or externally constructed works will suffer the same overheads and same problems but with risks of staff overheads if fully in house during lean construction periods such as now where the new GPS and NLTP has diverted most of the budget in to NZTA works away from local authorities.

authority based works approach (Ministary of Works/City Design) is good for baseload year in year out work, but that is changing now given budget constraints and its mainly cost escalation that causes problems at +40% on planned cost. It doesn't take much for the workforce to sit idle and burn opex with no benefit.

Handle9

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#3311032 20-Nov-2024 16:26

Benoire:

johno1234:

I think that's rubbish. A government department build will face the same problems as a private build when it comes to modern cost overheads. They don't escape any of the regulations and laws and overheads the private infrastructure builders are facing. You cannot compare the environment enjoyed by 1950's government builds to that we have today.

I work in the construction industry, specifically transport in a large road controlling authority as the design manager, and costs are predominately construction related and on the side of material and product supply. A large scale project will generally only cost 10-15% for design to IFC with the remaining 85% in the construction phase. Whilst there are cost savings to be had by in house design for certain activities, in house or externally constructed works will suffer the same overheads and same problems but with risks of staff overheads if fully in house during lean construction periods such as now where the new GPS and NLTP has diverted most of the budget in to NZTA works away from local authorities.

authority based works approach (Ministary of Works/City Design) is good for baseload year in year out work, but that is changing now given budget constraints and its mainly cost escalation that causes problems at +40% on planned cost. It doesn't take much for the workforce to sit idle and burn opex with no benefit.

It's not like this is a New Zealand specific problem. Most of the developed world has difficulties building infrastructure. There's a lot of reasons for that and a lot of it is death by a thousand cuts. These are big, complex projects with a ton of dependencies, often in a built environment.

I lolled at the comment above that each hospital doesn't need a new design. It's a farcical comment, particularly when most hospitals in New Zealand are brownfields where you are building a new building on an existing site and the new building needs to work in context with the rest of the site.

It's not like the Ministry of Works had a great record with large and complex projects. The Clyde Dam is a very good example.

johno1234

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#3311044 20-Nov-2024 16:49

fastbike:

Think what you like. As an example we need to be building a major hospital every 5 years or so to keep up with population growth, changes in health tech, and aging infrastructure. With the backlog that's probably one every three years for the next twenty years. We do not need a new design for each one. The expertise gained by design / build of the Chch hospital disappeared after the project was finished in 2016. Then it had to be reassembled for Dunedin in 2021, which has become a shambles. And the idiots in charge of the govt finances when Chch hospital was commissioned nick-and-dimed the project and shaved $100M by not building the third tower even though modelling showed it was needed. It's now being added with much disruption at 3 x the price.

A new hospital every 5 years? Do you really mean that?

Where do you get this idea that the knowledge is lost? We have books and computers. The knowledge is not lost any more than it would be lost from in-house if it was all built by one government department. Moreover Hospitals and other infrastructure are not one size fits all cookie cutter designs. That's such a centralised planning point of view. Dunedin Hospital in no way needs to be or should be based on Christchurch or any other hospital.

mattwnz

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#3311064 20-Nov-2024 17:13

A lot of the infrastructure needs comes down to population growth. But we don't' seem to really have any plans or restrictions on this. It is one reasons we ended up with a housing crisis, and then almost everything else around infrastructure has also become a crisis. Whether that be the three waters, power, roading etc. It didn't' used to be this bad, but NZ also hasn't had this sort of rapid imported population growth either. The Brain Drain 2.0 however may help a bit.

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nickb800

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#3311431 21-Nov-2024 13:40

fastbike:

johno1234:

Indeed. I think the costs of hiring a digger or an engineer here are comparable to the ROW. However the planning, consenting and compliance overheads appear to be a crushing burden on infrastructure projects.

Before all of this neo liberal rubbish, we had a Ministry of Works that built dams, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges etc. That were built to a good standard, and at an affordable price. But then the silliness of the "private sector can do it better" started and look where we are. The biggest problem is the lack of a pipeline and institution knowledge that gets built up over the course of a project, at tax payer expense, and is then shown the door at the end of the project rather than moving onto the next project. Case in point - the shambolic hospital build / procurement in this country.

I think we tend to look at the Ministry of Works through rose tinted glasses these days. Yes they had their own engineers and diggers, but a huge amount of public works projects, even in their hey day, were designed and/or constructed by private sector contractors. Fletchers, Downers, McConnel Dowell and others are behind New Zealand's big historical construction projects just as much as MWD. Tunnelling has always been a very niche area for New Zealand, and we've pretty much always brought in specialist overseas companies for large tunnels (for example, Rimutaka rail tunnel in 1951, Manapouri power station in 1963).

Where the Ministry of Works made a difference was through oversight - it directly employed engineers and architects who could set a high standard and maintain institutional knowledge across projects. They meant that the government was an informed client when it came to procuring design and construction services

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3311531 21-Nov-2024 18:32

I've been involved with some school build-outs. Invariably they're a 100% custom design full of 'learning experiences'. No-one is familiar with the design, everything is being done for the first time, the plans are full of impossibilities and contradictions. Ceilings too thin for the services to fit in, multiple trades shown occupying the same ceiling tile, funky custom HVAC designs, and other issues.

On the other hand, you have standard school buildings. Wikipedia lists e.g. 29 schools with the Nelson Two-Storey blocks, with most schools having about 2-3 such blocks.

The engineering mostly gets done once. You learn from what goes wrong during construction and fix it before building the next tranche.

When you inevitably need to make changes, you can use the same designs and contractors to make those changes, rather than each design being bespoke. Earthquake strengthening, adding ethernet, adding solar, removing asbestos etc.

Handle9

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#3311546 21-Nov-2024 19:24

SomeoneSomewhere:

I've been involved with some school build-outs. Invariably they're a 100% custom design full of 'learning experiences'. No-one is familiar with the design, everything is being done for the first time, the plans are full of impossibilities and contradictions. Ceilings too thin for the services to fit in, multiple trades shown occupying the same ceiling tile, funky custom HVAC designs, and other issues.

On the other hand, you have standard school buildings. Wikipedia lists e.g. 29 schools with the Nelson Two-Storey blocks, with most schools having about 2-3 such blocks.

The engineering mostly gets done once. You learn from what goes wrong during construction and fix it before building the next tranche.

When you inevitably need to make changes, you can use the same designs and contractors to make those changes, rather than each design being bespoke. Earthquake strengthening, adding ethernet, adding solar, removing asbestos etc.

It's really hard to emphasize how different a school building is to a hospital, particularly a clinical services building. Schools are really very simple buildings that are built fairly inexpensively.

Hospitals are about as highly serviced as it gets outside some specialist buildings that aren't as big. Most DHBs use a panel of designers and contractors which results in fairly consistent designs and construction. Major private clients do the same thing (e.g. Auckland Airport mostly uses Hawkins for terminal work.)

mattwnz

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#3311677 22-Nov-2024 00:45

I think it is crazy how much school buildings have been recently built for in NZ. When I was at school, most of the building were prefabs and were trucked on. Nothing wrong with them at all if well insulated . Some where Lockwoods which did get quite hot due to a lack of insulation but heat pumps today would fix that. But they weren't really a thing in NZ when I was at school. It does seem the current crowd are reigning in spending on school buildings.

Handle9

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#3311679 22-Nov-2024 00:48

mattwnz:

I think it is crazy how much school buildings have been recently built for in NZ. When I was at school, most of the building were prefabs and were trucked on. Nothing wrong with them at all if well insulated .

They were garbage buildings with no insulation and no heating.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3311723 22-Nov-2024 09:19

Prefabs are also pretty space inefficient, which is a problem where schools are short on land. Which is most of them.

LostOhSoLost

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#3312275 24-Nov-2024 07:32

The government is the largest purchaser of infrastructure construction in the country by a country mile. A core function of government is the purchase and maintenance of infrastructure.

At which point is a pretty simple argument that John Hart Smiths paper Out-Sourced Profits– The Cornerstone of Successful Subcontract* which was written about why the Boeing 787 wasn't going to make Boeing money is equally applicable to governments and infrastructure. Long story short contracting out leaves one with the liability, reduced control, doubled overheads (as you got be able monitor your contractors with insight) and you got to pay those subcontractors profits.

*i wont link it, but its kicks about on the web in numerous places.

cddt

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#3312702 25-Nov-2024 14:40

LostOhSoLost:

A core function of government is the purchase and maintenance of infrastructure.

A lot of people will debate that with you. Not me, but a lot of people I know would disagree with that statement.

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