British Engineering, whats going on????

[DanDare]

:rant:

What is happening to England these days. We were once a nation renowed for Engineering brilliance. Brunel was a god!

So why now in this day in age can we not build a stadium within the bugdet and on time. The Chinese can now build a F1 circuit in the space of a year and its ready for the race.

[sharriso74]

Because we used an Australian firm
"
What's that skippy our share price is plumeting"

[Mariner]

Because we used an Australian firm
"
What's that skippy our share price is plumeting"

But unfortunately the workforce is British!

Remember the good old days when people employed apprentices? Well in the early eighties we stopped the old fashioned apprenticeships and replaced them with various cheap labour schemes, YOPs, YTS etc and now we are paying the price of a major skills shortage! A period of minimal investment in training and skills has led to our current sorry state.

[Peter Henry]

Relax all is not lost! The journos of Solo Moto this week heaped praise on the Triumph 675 and after first raising the question if it was possible for a small English motorcycle company to take on the might of the Japanese and their middle weight sports bikes. Their own answer to this question was an emphatic YES and then some! :P

[Mr Toad]

But unfortunately the workforce is British!


Not entirely true - a report in the Independent today http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article354784.ece indicates that 29% of the workforce in London is composed of low paid migrants - so I guess it's actually being built by eastern europeans :shock:

[rwoodcock01]

But unfortunately the workforce is British!


Not entirely true - a report in the Independent today http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article354784.ece indicates that 29% of the workforce in London is composed of low paid migrants - so I guess it's actually being built by eastern europeans :shock:

The wife works round the corner from there (the stadium), stopped in the ace one night before picking her up on the bike, spoke to a builder who works there, he told me that a good proportion of the workers where low paid workers from East Europe, and at one point they where actively avoiding english workers because they where to expensive.

Not sure how true his statements where, so I would take them with a pinch of salt myself.

Cheers

Rich

[Biker Biggles]

I thought the old stadium was a 1930s icon and perfectly adequate for the job.It was an act of vandalism to demolish it,and a very expensive one at that.They are now all getting their come uppance and I for one am glad. :evil:

[medwaysv]

agree biggles..maybe the old stadium could have had a bit of a re-furb other than that leave well alone
unfotunatly it makes this country seem to be populated by idiots

[mattSV]

medwaysv wrote:-



unfotunatly it makes this country seem to be populated by idiots

Speak for yourself :wink:

I think RUN by idiots would be more apt.

[Cronos]

What is happening to England these days. We were once a nation renowed for Engineering brilliance. Brunel was a god!

So why now in this day in age can we not build a stadium within the bugdet and on time. The Chinese can now build a F1 circuit in the space of a year and its ready for the race.

Well that's nothing compared to the negligent financial management of the Scottish Parliament building which was estimated at £10m to £40m and managed to come in a shade under half a billion pounds and years late! :roll:

It's currently a no go zone with emergency repairs being required to stop the roof falling in.

Still, it's nothing that copious amounts of tax payers' money won't solve. :x

[Demonz]

But unfortunately the workforce is British!


Not entirely true - a report in the Independent today http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article354784.ece indicates that 29% of the workforce in London is composed of low paid migrants - so I guess it's actually being built by eastern europeans :shock:

Maybe thats the bit thats been built already though :wink:

[Beenz]

At risk of sounding like a fusty old giffer, areas of the construction trade used to take pride in there work and I'm sure the majority still do. They worked for an honest days pay. Pay peanuts and well... lets face it you ain't gonna get the best. If you were (are) paid badly would you put in your best or would you do as little as you could get away with?

[valleyboy]

Im still confused as to how the hell does it cost that much??? and they are over budgent by a few million already... :?

now, I dont want to sound sarcastic here.. but the Millenium Stadium was built in a city centre, on time, but a tad over budget :wink: holds 72,500 for £126 M squid.... yet Wembley, which isnt in the city centre, and has a fair amount of room around it... will hold 90,000 but costs in excess of £750 M squid.... why such massive price differentiation? are the seats in Wembley gold plated and heated ??

One thing.. I feel sorry for the FA who will be paying off that bill for a long long time... unless they do what they probably will, put ticket prices up rather high to compensate.... One good thing though for the FA.. they were wise enough to go for a fixed price contract....

Plus, what I have been reading, they are lucky the thing hasnt been condemned already.... sewer pipes cracking etc... havent they heard of building inspectors ?? lol suppose to figure these things out before starting work... :lol:

[Diveboy]

Pay peanuts and well... lets face it you ain't gonna get the best

Agreed but I think it may be a case of right money being paid in (if not too much) but it seems to be going to the wrong people. If you look at the figures you could have had the Welsh stadium and the German one by now.

Look its the English rob them blind no one will complain.

[wheelnut]

Who really gives a crap about an old fashioned stadium? :D

Football is for children anyway, why all the fuss?

We aint won a serious football game for 40 years :P

[Rog]

Firstly there is nothing wrong with british engineering. Being a civil engineer myself I can tell you that British Engineers are employed all over the world on other countries landmark buildings.

Having kept up to speed with whats happening at the new Wembley it should be pointed out that since the get go the firm in charge (Multi***) made way to many promises about how quickly they could build the stadium. IMHO, since then, they have tried to shaft every sub contractor that has worked on the job. So everytime they claim that something is wrong and is delaying them and try and pin the blaim on someone else litigation ensues with inevitable delays. IIRC they have sent several companies to the wall with delayed payments for supposed faulty work. Even if the work is shown not to be faulty with the original company gone they can negoatiate a reduced payment with the administrators. Put bluntly they are hard ass bas**$ds. However carma appears to have caught up with them :lol: . Not many tears are being shed over them in the industry lets put it that way.

As for eastern european labour, I think that this is a little unfair to say that since they are not english it means automatically that there work should have any less quality than their english counterparts. Remember Auf Wiedersien pet (excuse the spelling) we were in the middle of a resession and the germans needed the labour.

its the same in this case, london's labour is very expensive due to living costs, therefore imported labour for the duration of the job makes financial sense.

Just my 2 pennies.

[the_runt69]

To add my 2D's worth the comapny have actually lost money on the staduim due to a fixed price and penalty payments. So should see a healthy drop in their profits for next year. Hope the Aussie cricket team have the same dip in fortune.

H

[Well Oiled]

I was talking to one of the bosses from Skanska construction, who made a bid for the work. He said that the Aussie firm was way too optimistic about how mcuh they could complete the project for, and on what timeline. The UK firms just walked away.

Combination of faults of the contracting firm not being realistic and the people who hired them being stupid enough to believe them.

[DanDare]

I think I didn't make my post clear enough. I wasn't having a stab at any one particular area or persons just the whole thing. I am aware that there are always set backs and that non English firms or workforce are used however, the outside world don't see this and they can look at us and just say Oh look another over budget unfinished project.....again. Surely we've been in this business long enough to work out whats fesible and whats not.

What was wrong with the old design, why do they find it nessacary to build a radical new untested design ( which nearly collapses ) and why do they just go for the cheapest unrealistic solution, knowing full well it wouldn't work and then millions more being spent to either compensate or finish the job.

We should be remembered as a country that plans a project and fulfills it what ever the cost or nationality of contractor.

So my gripe wasn't with civil engineers. It was with the whole aspect of Government to Architect to Engineering firm to work force.
Is there not a independant department that monitors the whole thing?

[GSXR Carlos]

I work in construction and it's a shame that a project such as this gives the industry such a bad press

We're not all complet muppets but poor evaluation fo the facts and a desire to get something as cheap as possible lead to this trouble.

had the clients been willing to pay for the right ontractors to do the work then there wouldn't have been so many problems.

My grandad, who has experience in the industry said something really funny the other day, "what's that big arch for, its a complte waste of time" and i cant agree more :lol:

[northwind]

What was wrong with the old design, why do they find it nessacary to build a radical new untested design ( which nearly collapses ) and why do they just go for the cheapest unrealistic solution, knowing full well it wouldn't work and then millions more being spent to either compensate or finish the job.


That's how competetive tendering seems to work... Give te contract to the cheapest bid, regardless of whether or not it's realistic, then don't complain when it goes so far overbudget that it's higher than any of the alternative bids.

i think the real problem is that for large-scale architecture, everyone wants a structure with impact, they don't want a structure that works. So you literally have "architects" like Norman Fowler drawing something that looks pretty on a napkin, then handing it to a team of engineers who have to somehow make it work. The results are always compromised

Historically, if you wanted a bridge, you built a hefty bit of steel or stone or concrete, it'd stand for a century without problems. Now, you build a delicate spiderweb of steel cables and randomly placed mirrors, powered by the phases of the moon, and just occasionally on a very calm day you can let one person walk across it at a time.

Or if you wanted a block of offices, you built something that looked like it was made of lego. You could make it handsome, but it'd still be a box. But now, if you want to get ahead in architecture and be a "name", you build a physiologically accurate glass **** that fires laser beams out of the end. of course, it overheats in summer, freezes in winter, costs a fortune and gives less floorspace than the box, but everyone talks about it. (what people seem to miss, is that a lot of the people who talk about it say something like "Look at that ****ing ridiculous glass ****"

Or, closer to home for me, instead of putting a parliament building into the already existing, nearly suitable building that's been made available, you purpose build a "feature" to "represent new democracy", which represents new democracy by being slow, expensive, and having to be abandoned after a year.

[will]

to be fair though, the FA is a nightmare client. design changes and slow decision making. Multiplex were also left in the sh*t when the steel contractor went bust.

they're also a client of my company, hence sticking up for them (a bit)

[Rog]

IMHO, the reason the steel company went bust was because of Multiplex not paying in the first place. So there own fault really.

DanDare, I know you were not having a go at individuals, but what you must realise is that this kind of thing happens all over the world. A good example would be the island airport in Japan (name escapes me at the mo) but anyway the island is now sinking so the building thats on it has had to be put on jacks to be inched up every year!!.

Large construction projects are amazingly complicated and it only takes one thing to go wrong to throw the whole thing back a few weeks. This soon adds up.

We could all just put up boxes on time, on budget and they would do exactly what they say on the tin, wouldnt that be boring though. One of my personal heros Joseph Bazlegette and Brunel didnt beleive that any job was impossible. There jobs always ran over time and over budget and yet we marvel at their achievements still today.

[northwind]

Brunel was inventing new technologies as he went along, and buidling things that nobody thought could be built. That's hardly the case at Wembley.

[Mariner]

DanDare, I know you were not having a go at individuals, but what you must realise is that this kind of thing happens all over the world. A good example would be the island airport in Japan (name escapes me at the mo) but anyway the island is now sinking so the building thats on it has had to be put on jacks to be inched up every year!!.



The airport is Kansai International, but that isn't an example of a **** up, it's an example of engineering brilliance. The island was always going to settle, they calculated the amount of subsidence and then installed the jacks to keep the terminal building level.

[timwilky]

I have worked for engineering companies all my life. Even though I am in IT my degree is Mech Eng. My employer of the past 20 years has provided 25% of the worlds power generation capacity and I have been fortunate enough to work on a large number of overseas construction projects.

There is nothing wrong with British Engineering. However I have seen two areas that worry me. The first is rationalisation and iradication of duplicate capacity. Working for a multinational this usually means shuting down capacity in the UK. The second more worrying trend within the construction industry seems to be the claim culture. Whereby construction companies quote for the work at cost hoping to actually make their money for claim after claim for design change or failure to provide information, additional scopes of work etc. Instead of being a partnership with the intention of completing the project on time and to budget it becomes an exercise in protecting your own backsides and screwing the contractors.