Forth Road Bridge
 

The scottish goverment has awarded a contract to a consortium to build the new Forth Road bridge at a cost (currently £1.47bn to £1.62bn).
http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/o...bridge-450.jpg

Now the chinese have just built a bridge,for roughly the same cost as the new forth road bridge.
The 26-mileJiaozhou Bay crossing connects the bustling port city of Qingdao, south-east of Beijing, to the industrial district of Huangdao.
The eight-lane, 35-metre-wide bridge opened to traffic on Thursday morning, China's Xinhua news agency said. Built over a four-year period the project cost about £1.4bn and uses 5,000 pillars. It shortens the driving route between the two locations by about 20 miles.
http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/o...42_964x604.jpg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...tle-years.html

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Whats the chinese minimum salary?

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

+1

They also probably won't pay as much for materials, or manufacture them to European codes.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

I bet they don't pay pensions either:D
And their NHS is a bit basic:)
And there is their ludicrously rigged exchange rate that means they get everything their own way.
Any opposition goes under a tank in the main square.

Apart from that life's good:cool:

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

going by the costs for the scottish parliment and now the gayburgh tram fiasco no doubt the cost will triple and it will be the tax payers shelling out again-they should set the cost in stone and enforce that whoever wins the contract must cover any increase in costings over the amount they stated they could complete the job for.

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Bridges are ****ing amazing. 26 miles of span across that river/ sea whatever it is. It's all mind boggling engineering and logistics. Don't care about the money, the achievement is fantastic.

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yup and look at it. 3 lanes on each side and its empty, hows that for forward planning. us on the other hand = crap, overpriced never on budget or time. the rest of the world must laugh at us as i know i do.

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Was thinking of using the existing Forth Road Bridge last Friday going to GM IV, but decided against it 'cos of the weight of my luggage & I dont swim too well in textiles! ;)

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It doesn't span 26 miles though. It spans about 20 metres with the odd suspension section so that ships can fit underneath. There is nothing out of the ordinary about the design - how the hell they managed to build it though is another question.

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I get the point of the thread though TBH, and there was always going to be the "well things are much cheaper in China" which they are, but it still costs us several times what it costs the Spanish to build a mile of motorway. Public sector projects in this country are just one great big gravy train for job creation programmes and consultants.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Just occasionally we manage it. The A3 Hindhead Tunnel is opening early and under budget. Although, to be fair, it's bl00dy rare!!

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Being one of those supposed gravy train consultants, I take umbridge with this (get it!) One of the main reasons things cost so much here is the planning, public consultation, land costs, legal fees and all of this can take years before a JCB gets near the site. In china somebody drew a line and the chinese government just agree to build it end of story. Investment like thsi will employ thousands of people and keep at lot of peoples heads above the water. We coudl always spend it on doll money ! Just to note that engineers in this country are typically poorly paid compared to anywhere else in the rich developed world.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Will the trams go over the new bridge? They just as well, as they ain't feckin going anywhere else.

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Yep, got the joke, but forget comparisons with China as a justification, it's a Daily Fail bit of spin used to sensationalise and nothing more.

I work on IT projects across all sectors, so get to do direct comparisons between the same projects between public and private sector, the result is always the same I'm afraid. I don't know anything about civil construction, but I find it hard to believe they are much less of a gravy train than in IT.

When I do public sector projects I'm a the gravy train consultant too, I'll happily take the money, because if I don't one of my competitors will, but I'll advise against spend where I don't think it's necessary, and it doesn't make me any happier to see my taxes wasted when the customer insists on a nonsense requirement being fulfilled.

I once met a competitor who was sitting surfing the web all day in council offices, he didn't know why he was still there when the project he was working on completed a year ago, but nobody questioned what he was doing, nobody told him they didn't need him anymore, and they kept paying his invoices, so he just kept turning up!

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Consultants in the construction industry are typically not the same as in other industries.

The people who get labelled consultants are architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers etc. These people, myself included, should be more properly called designers. The people who are actually consultants in the real sense of the word at planning consultants, environmental consultants - I.e people who know processes, give advice but at the end of the day don't actually do any design or take much responsibility.

From what Rog was saying he sounds like one of the design side consultants - and we are being screwed. Fees are now well below 1% of the project cost, which is bugger all considering the time you put in, the responsibility you take and the ever increasing demands put on you by clients. In fact we are treated more like sub-contractors now than consultants.

Construction in the country is more adversarial and contractural than anywhere else in the world. We are trying to move to a more 'partnering' mentality like the rest of the world, but old habits die hard.

This isn't helped when projects like Building School for the Future employ additional consultants (so called experts) to double. And triple check everything to ensure that the design consultants and contractors are doing it the most efficient way, but end up taking millions of pounds of fees themselves. It's a false economy, but it's not fed by the majority of the industry professionals, but rather the government departments that require double ad triple checks to cover their own backs.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

i completely agree.

look at the good old USA if it not done on time and on budget the company that is doing the work is fined heavily. this i know as Heart (Crudens) the builders nearly went bust building a shopping mall. but this country is a case of toooo many fingers in the one pie and think that any public project of this size is looked at as being a cash cow. i hate to say it but Edinburgh has not got a good track record for being prudent with cash. i can guarantee that the figures at the end of the day will be tripled. and don't give the excuse of land being expensive yada yada as its all taken by a compulsory purchase order and the owner is given peanuts for it.

its going to be yet another red face for scotland i'm afraid to say. i hope i'm proved wrong but our track record says different.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Just to expand on what I said above. Many delays are caused by cost cutting at the feasibility stage, meaning that a clear brief is not often given to the developers, problems that should have been identified at this stage are not (meaning delays later), and client changes are often made at a late stage, where 'private' clients would accept it does bot make financial sense to waste their money for relatavely little gain.

For a project to run well you need a professional client, who will not try to scrimp on initial investigations, which is a false economy and often ends up costing much more in the long run. This type of client is a rare thing within public bodies.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

so why do company's falsify the costs in the initial pricing?

to get the job then shaft the public for more money as once the project is undergoing then we have no alternative but to pay the robbing currents. if there were contracts put in place that dictated that all costs above the initial were responsibility of the contractors then i think you would find things got done a bit better.

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Tommy H is right on the money. In our industry we have a very litigious system where everyone is screwing each other for money because the margins are so small. If a job overruns normally there are hefty (LD's) Liquidated damages and these can run into the hundreds of thousands a week even on relatively small contracts. In buildings your biggest nightmares are whats in the ground, things not being where you thought they were or things that werent supposed to be there in the first place (gas mains, electriclty and the like). Also the weather can play havoc to wet or to cold and you cant lay things like concrete, tarmac etc. Ill give you an example, recently happily building a roundabout, on time on budget and BAM we find a cast iron water main. it runs across all teh works we had planned and hit our critical path (i.e. works that have to be down to allow other parts to continue) so we loose two weeks while we wait for the water company to pull its thumb out of its ass and come and look at it, test it and offer solutions. No one knew it was there but its cost two weeks time and of course everything is on site for an extra two weeks so who pays?..... Thats where the fun starts :)

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Because you can only price on the information available to you.

'falsifying' costs is illegal, but if important information is missed out that causes additional costs the contractor cannot be expected to pay for the clients mistakes.

If the client only does half a study to get it on the cheap, but this does not reveal, say contaminated land, is it fair that the contractor should make a loss because the client was cheap early on?

If the client pushes the contractor to start on time, but them makes changes, or does not make the important decisions in time, despite being asked the questions in plenty of time, thus causing delays and additional costs - should the contractor be made to pay for this?

And you can't make an allowance for this error, because then someone else will win the tender, someone who hasnt made the allowance. They always seem to go for the cheapest, even if that is not the bid offering value for money.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Spot on Bibio. I have never understood how you can quote for a job and then charge 2 or 3 times the amount to get it finished a year or two late. New Wembley Stadium anyone? Mind you, with public sector jobs, the "client" i.e. government or other public body keep changing the brief with no concern as to the effects on costs. You need a system where the client, whether public or private sector, says "I want A, B and C.", the contractor asks, once only, "Are you completely sure that's exactly what you want?" and then builds it, to the agreed spec for the agreed price. No f^&%ing about on either side.

I trained originally as a a civil engineer and worked for private clients and public sector such as the MOD and, as I'm sure Ralph would agree from the sound of it, the biggest problem with the public sector is they never properly research what it is they want or how it's supposed to be achieved. And then they change their minds half way through. Utter madness.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

This hits the overspend in a nutshell, poor prep, vague brief and no clear clue as to what they want. This added the planning and public consultation costs in UK sees prices spiralling. We have had a recent scheme where we have tried to advise the client not to change materials and layouts due to cost and time for very little gain but they dont listen and its cost them. We have to charge for the extra time or we woudl go out of business !!

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

DJFridge has hit it on the head with the govt

As another person in the construction and property sector.
Govt. contracts are seen as pay days by companies. BSF is the biggest of them flattening buildings selling the land to X (I'm not mentioning companies in this) who build, manage and operate the school and charge the council an offensive amount of money more than it does cost, and at 25years new building time as they're built to a worse standard than some office developments.

The term 'consultants' is a load of s****, I'm a Surveyor I do the initial work on projects like the Forth bridge and paid a joke of a wage for the pleasure.

As a side note to all this (and this has been mentioned) the construction and property sector is paid sod all. You can earn more as a bar manager at Whetherspoons than you can as a served surveyor. The going rate ATM for a senior Chartered Building Surveyor is around £20k p.a.

Architects are on even worse wages and conditions depend who you speak to, £12.5k and 15 days holiday for a senior Architectural Technician is being paid by a couple of practices

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Nice thread.

Changing spec is a big problem we see in IT projects too, don't know how often I end up uttering under my breath "another public sector customer that doesn't know it's rrrssss from it's elbow"

The biggest issue is not the scope change itself, that happens in every project, it's mentality towards money. It's always treated as somebody elses money. There no shareholder that's going to kick your rrssss, so it's no problem to spend it.

The "If you change your mind you'll still be invoiced for X that has been completed, but what you want now is going to cost you Y". The private sector decision maker says "I can't do Y, because I only budgeted for X, and I'm going to get my rrrsss kicked for not planning it properly". The public sector guy goes, "Oh well, good job it's not my money".

The other issue is nobody is expected to put their neck on the line and take responsibility, go three times over budget on a private project, and you'd be sacked quicker that you can say P45. In the public sector the consequences are far less severe, and the culture is one of covering your own rrrss. So somebody in a meeting says, "is that being done right?", and everyone nods and goes, I don't want to answer that question, lets get a consultant in to tell us if it's being done right or not, and if it's wrong later down the line, we can blame him. If the consultant finds it's not being done right now, we can blame the other consultant who we hired to tell us what to do the first time round. In the private sector, if you can't answer the questions, then questions are asked about what value you bring.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

PFI was an absolute joke, Engineers and Architects screwed down to no fees, Joint Ventures based off shore screwing the government body. It would have been great to walk away from them, but when they are the only horse in town.

Im not going to deny that as an Engineer with 20yrs experience that I make a decent living but compared to similar trained proffessions it is not that well paid.

(recent contract)

Senior Engineer (chartered 20yrs experience) £65hr
Solicitor similar experience to above £245hr

you do the math :)

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

And thats particularly cheap for a solicitor, Land lawyers its closer to £1,000 hr.

The best one I was involved with this year was a service desk for a regulated industry: Desk charge (person manning) £60hr, calls +£10; add the needs for service plans asbestos reports etc.. +£5 charge for administration, fees for auditing the 10-15% of the works 1% (of works cost), quantity surveyor fees 1% of invoice total per month (they made over 10k in a week in March because of year end).

And this was cheaper than doing it the SAP procurement processs

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

That seems a little mis-leading to me. May be the case up there, but doesn't seem familiar down here.

This doesn't apply to people who have had to change companies and take a massive cut just to work, but I would have said most engineers (with time served but no financial interest in the company) are somewhere in the 30's.


Architects I would say are just slightly more say 30/40's. I can't comment On surveys because I havent had that conversation with any.

It's worth remembering that architects go to university for about 7 years to get RIBA accredited - that's nearly as long as doctors and look at the pay differential. Engineers go to uni and then have to do PG study and pass a chartership in a similar manner to solicitors - look at the pay differential there.

These are not cowboy builders as most people see them, but professionals. And they do seem to get paid less than the same professionals abroad, and even similar professionals out side construction in the UK
think it's worth pointing out those are not what the employee gets, but the rates that they are charged out at. Put of that has to come all overheads and insurances. Plus many jobs are not on a time rate basis (only where works are an 'extra'. Fees at the moment are on heavily discounted percentages of the project cost.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Tommy that the sad thing, up here everyone took >10% paycuts in 2008/9 some another 10% last year and some firms aren't even breaking even on their fees

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

it makes fecking sick to the stomach what some of theses robbing barstwards manage to steel out the public purse.

i work 168hrs a week yes you read it right and get all in £20k a year which is going to drop to 17K in september. i don't get paid holidays or anything remotely like that because of robbing currents steeling from the pockets of the people. its wrong all feckin wrong.

Re: Forth Road Bridge
 

Bibeo, the point that I think we're all trying to make is that the majority of people in the project would rather do it right first time and get paid the once. It's not robbing if the client is indecisive and asks you to do it twice - you should get paid for doing the work you have done - especially when the work is instructed by the council/government.

If a council worker was paid to paint a wall, they do it, then it's decided that they'd rather have it painted blue than White, why should the painter have to do it the second time for free? It's not his fault they want a different colour.

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Tommy, Biblo rant is because of his circumstances.

Bib that is f***ing disgusting is that through the cuts to the DWP?