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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 03:14 AM
It's been a solid year for me living in the UK. The honeymoon period has worn off and now there are oddities i see consistantly all around me.
For starters, engineering works take a god awful long time. There's a section of a major arterial road in Oxford that started construction back in July of 2015. This stretch of road is about a mile in length, yet the "estimated completion" signs say it will be finished around September of 2018! Mind you traffic through this section is painful and makes traveling in Boston and LA seem like a dream!
Same goes for this Thameslink program crap. They decided to close down London Bridge Station this month and it won't re-open until 2018! This is one of the busiest stations. I assumed that trains would roll right through and my commute would be cut down. Nope! I'm sitting here outside london bridge now because of "congestion". Make no notice of the fact that trains go right past a perfectly open station platform at London Bridge.
Do you want to hear a joke?
Network rail/Skanska workers working!
You'll never see anybody doing any real work on these projects either. Yet they cost several hundred million pounds.
Contrast this with america, there was 20 mile stretch of i90 that was stripped and re-paved in two months between a very busy stretch of exits where i used to live.
What gives? Does the UK use these projects as GDP boosters over a long period of time to hide lack luster GDP growth? Seems like everyone is getting a raw deal with this.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 03:26 AM
They're supposed to. The longer government projects drag out, the more money they can siphon off the tax payer. Public works projects are not there to make a profit, they are there to be as expensive as possible, to line to pockets of cronies with "consulting fees". It's not at all true that everyone's getting a raw deal, only net taxpayers are, others are making out like bandits.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 03:52 AM
The health and safety clip board middle management and the inverse pyramid. That is 10 chiefs to each indian (over management). However the big problem is that 90% of the time there isn't actually anyone doing any work.
Recently they have spent more time/money on motorway projects putting up heat warming "my daddy works here" signs on road projects. Those stick in the craw when you have literally never seen anyone doing any work on the stretch, in all the times you have been through.
Another problem is utter and deliberate disdain for the motorist. Don't forget road altering projects are often done to deliberately make car driving more unpleasant (road narrowing etc). Basically the powers that be actively want you to have a bad time. The police will close a whole motorway if there is an accident and trap everyone on the road for many hours. They could not give a shit about car drivers. They're just a source of income.
As Phoenix says if you ever have any business dealings with the roads, the amount of money floating about is absolutely staggering. Even several steps down the ladder from the people who are really killing it you can make a killing off it. I made a load of cash off helping put up traffic information screens at service stations. I was charging my blokes out at 2-3x what I was paying them and they didn't blink and I was the sub contractor for the company that were, presumably, charging the govt. even more on top of the piss take prices I was getting (happy days).
The actual state of roads in the UK is absolutely shite compared to what it used to be. It's somewhat disguised by the better suspension of modern cars, but it's more akin to driving on a tarmaced african dirt road at times. Obviously other countries have worse roads, but fuck me, if you can't have a decent road in the Uk, what are we here for. Not the fucking weather and the beautiful women.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 04:06 AM
The UK government doesn't directly employ anyone who actually does the work. In recent years they've taken what were functional if inefficient civil service departments, messed around with them a lot, and made them into "executive agencies". But none of these agencies actually does the work either. They work with partners, who work with subcontractors, who may further subcontract.
The key point, that anyone who's worked with them will agree with: the public sector is shit at writing contracts. Even with very highly paid government lawyers in the loop, they are so terrified of making a decision that they leave themselves 'wiggle room', not realising that they are giving commercial entities options for getting paid more for less. That's when the person in charge isn't angling for a career change and giving favours to butter up their new employer.
It's sickening when you see how they throw out tax money.
"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 10:26 AM
I've often heard people joking about how if 3 council workmen are at work, that means one doing some aimless drilling, one sitting in a digger sleeping and the other one making tea. That might just be a local thing though.
The root of the problem is that there is no real incentive for the contractors to finish the job quickly.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 10:44 AM
Quote: (09-07-2016 04:06 AM)Benoit Wrote:
The key point, that anyone who's worked with them will agree with: the public sector is shit at writing contracts.
Quote: (09-07-2016 10:26 AM)britchard Wrote:
The root of the problem is that there is no real incentive for the contractors to finish the job quickly.
Obviously. That's because, under democracy, there's no down-side. In the market, if you write shit contracts and contract out at stupid costs, you'll get eaten alive by the competition and disappear soon enough. There's no way for the government to disappear. The individuals in it will be gone in 4 years or so, so
why would they give a shit?
Public works take forever, cost stupid money, and often have shitty quality, for the same reason fire makes smoke. There's no reason to be surprised, that's simply how that thing works.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 10:50 AM
Public sector workers have no idea about the value of money. They have never had to generate profit, or build something up from the acorn stage. They are spending other people's money, which doesn't encourage them to be thrifty. Equally, contractors often get paid when they fall behind schedule for delivery, etc etc. There's no incentive on the guys spending the money to obtain market value, and there is no incentive on the guys doing the work to deliver on time or ahead of schedule. Often it is profitable to fall behind whilst you wait for another contract to come through. It's an extremely wasteful system. One of the many ravages of the creeping socialist state.
When I was living in China nearly 10 years ago, the government would dig up the same stretches of road and re-lay it every few months, bussing in different groups of peasants from the countryside to complete the work each time. It was before the Olympics, so perhaps part of the intention was to ensure all citizens participated in the productivity boom associated with it. Whatever the reason, it was insanity to watch.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 03:32 PM
Quite often there are no real reasons for these projects to take place. However if they don't spend up their budget, then they won't be receiving the same figure in the following annual year.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 05:42 PM
I just finished a two year government project here in Canada, which is still run like England in many ways.
My part of the project was budgeted at $70k. In my line of work, in the private sector, this was estimated at taking 6-8 weeks. This is what I budgeted, estimated and this is what I held fast to.
It took two years, and my rough estimate cost is about $450k. What happened to the other $380k? Well, four times during the project, the useless projects managers (there were 7 of them!) had contract extensions. At this announcement, they would all be excited and plan to go out and drink wine to celebrate (they were ALL women).
Another cost of this is the additional project costs for allowing a project to run like this. For example, scaffolding was budgeted by me to be up for 5 days of the project. We used it for 3 days and it sat up for 6 months. Construction managers are going grey and having heart attacks, as our government likes to use Public/Private partnerships. So all the accountability rides on the private sector, and the public sector gets someone to blame come election time. Multiply this by 100 and its easy to see how money just pours into the projects.
But hey, we have the pink hard hats the government demanded now, all in the form of project managers. They want 50% women (hahah) in construction. Tiny projects like mine are running 6.5x over budget, and 25x times as long as it should. Its becoming the perfect storm for complete bankruptcy of the government, because [current year].
My friend worked on a project like this and told me that they had to cut so many corners in order to stay in business. They left out escalators, shortened stations, etc in order to not run into bankruptcy by having to make the bureaucrats happy.
The feminist pandering is so dangerous, that it is literally breaking down the ability of the WORKERS to actually build and maintain things in the west.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 07:19 PM
In the US, construction projects, both private and public, can take forever as well. Endless cycles of public meetings with NIMBY activists (Not In My Back Yard). Before work can begin, signs are posted on the proposed site describing the project and inviting input from the public during a defined period of time months in advance. It's a miracle that anything gets built at all.
Here in Mexico, construction is booming by comparison and things happen quickly. The public isn't always alerted about what is about to happen in their neighborhood, including power outages and water shutoffs. Permits may not even be requested. The sidewalk and even the street may be commandeered as a workspace. Trees that interfere with the project are cut down without oversight. Work sites get shut down just as quickly for violations (real or manufactured). A stop-work order sticker gets slapped on the entry, with a fine for breaking the seal. I once saw a small retail location go up in a single day. Workers tend to be jack-of-all-trades types, so although they aren't particularly good at any one skill, a single worker may be able to handle carpentry, cement, plumbing, electrical, painting and more. Building codes are ignored or non-existent. This makes things go faster as well. Delays are more likely to be caused by the project running out of money than by any bureaucratic obstacles.
I see the advantages and disadvantages of both systems. The ideal surely lies somewhere in the middle.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 08:26 PM
This is the same in Australia. Too many chiefs for every indian, and even the indians are lazy as fuck. You'd see 6-7 of them standing around doing nothing while maybe one would do a little bit of work, at any given time. If it's a road project, you will have a couple of chicks doing nothing except standing there holding a sign, and getting paid just as much as the men.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-07-2016, 10:04 PM
It is done for two reasons:
1 - To piss off motorists.
2 - To extract as much money from the UK tax payer as is humanly possible.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-08-2016, 01:43 AM
I think all you people miss the important reason for while this shit takes so long and is of poor quality, the English cant execute a plan for the life of them.
You have the people at the top crafting these grand strategy plans and projects and then when give the plan to a bunch of dipshits who dropped out of school at age 14, have been going in and out of welfare because they havent given a fuck about doing a good job in 2 decades, you get shit work output. There isnt even follow up to see if these people are doing what they're supposed to and there are barely any quality checks. The amount of times I've heard the answer "we have a man on it" as a response to "are you guys sure this is working?" is phenomenal. It's a massive cultural blind spot to the Brits and something you'll only pick up if you lived there.
Public projects are even worse since its other people's money they're fucking with and they care even less about doing it on time, or right, or at all for that matter.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-08-2016, 02:09 AM
Ah UK bashing. A Fun sport.
For many years we had a bus lane on the M4. Who the fuck gets on the bus on a motorway? No one. The worst part is it was in the fast lane. So that fast lane can only do 55MPH. The middle lane 70 and the slow lan 55-70mph. Absolutely ridiculous. I think they've scrapped that idea now.
Then the M1 which has has never ending road works from 2014. With average speed cameras due to reduced lane sizes. There's no one ever working and then theres the signs. Someone else mentioned the 'My daddy works here' but the ones that really piss me off is the 'My mummy works here'. No kid, your mum don't work here, she's never work here. Stop making shit up.
Railways I'm far more sympathetic too. I very rarely use them but they try to do maintenance work when it causes as little disruption as possible. So they do it at christmas. Kind of makes sense as a lot of businesses will be closed so economically it cause less disruption but it is absolute travel chaos if you need to use them then.
I use a car if I need to go anywhere but I don't really like driving. I get road rage real bad and almost every other car on the road is driving by a wanker, bitch, slut, cunt, etc.
Only the other week I took a short cut up a lane that was so badly potholed it blew a hole in my tyre and I had to change the damn thing at midnight.
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Why do UK public works projects take forever?
09-08-2016, 10:14 AM
Quote: (09-08-2016 09:00 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:
Ha, i lived outside of Oxford for about 6 months in a small burb town. I sometimes roll into Brighton to visit a friend of mine. I enjoy the countryside.
England has all sorts of nice things about it even in the countryside, your women aren't one of them!
If the woman in and around the university town of Oxford aren't to your tastes, then you must have exceptionally high standards.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety- Benjamin Franklin, as if you didn't know...