Delayed Construction
Posted: Fri 18 July, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »Today, the BBC is making some kind of big story out of the fact that the new visitor centre at the top of Mount Snowdon is going to be delayed until next year. The reason? There’s been a lot of bad weather while they’re building the thing.
The authority said progress on the scheme had been “remarkable” considering the conditions, including snow, heavy rain and winds regularly gusting over 80 mph.
Now my problem with this is simple – surely all the bad weather detailed above is exactly what you’d expect when you’re on the top of a mountain that’s some 3,560ft (nearly 1,100m) above sea level. What the fuck did they expect on a mountain top in Wales? Perfect sunny weather for two years?
So I just don’t see why it’s such a big thing – it would be far more newsworthy if the thing had been opened on time. In fact, it would be far more newsworthy if Carillion, the contractors, had actually planned the project and timescales correctly in the first place. Common sense, competence and professionalism breaks out? That’s a story that would be front page news at the moment.
Slightly more complex that that Lyle ……… the building contract will allow for inclement weather but the differing stages of the construction phase may well coincide with unexpected or worse than normal temperatures, rainfall etc. If a concrete pour has been programmed but is unable to occur that results in a delay for the whole contract. These things are not simple at the best of times even in low lying areas. The contractor will have allowed for weather within industry best practice guidelines and more than likely will be under penalty clauses for delay so it isn’t as if they aren’t trying. I know it seems absurd but there is also the issue of material lift, that can only occur in some cases using helicopters at altitude on difficult terrain. They can’t fly in bad weather. There will be many reasons for a delay and the news won’t cover those mainly because they won’t be able to understand and relay the neccesary reasons to the general public, christ I went to uni for 8 years, the last two spent studying contract law and process and there’s elements to do with construction phase that even I don’t fully understand.