Nation Building Shoulder Sealing
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Sign up for Nation Building
Not only are the schools to be signed as economic stimulus, I just received a phonecall from a friend who is travelling in SA from the Barossa Valley along the highway between Gawler and Elizabeth... He tells me he's seen it all now, a portable illuminated sign, like the road works ones in a trailer, black screen little red lights which said:
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6 comments:
Many years ago when we lived in a socialist-communist country, this sort of thing was an everyday sight.
To me it was deeply embarrassing that grown up people could produce crap like that.
I hoped, never to see it again, but it seems to me, socialists are the same everywhere.
Sloganeering is in their blood.
Mark Aurel
goreater! is this a sign?
OK kids - it's time to rant.......
Now, i'm with a commercial builder in Victoria & we won 20 schools (by tendering) for kevvis 'education revolution'.
1. We have protesters at one school beccause we had to cut down the shade trees to fit the new building in.
2. We are going to relocate the play/swingset that the kids can't use because it doesn't meet department standards @ a cost of $13K when we could have built a new one at twice the size for $15K.
3. We are going to build an admin centre at a regional (bush) school that has 30 students, that could fit most of the towns population & they don't want or need.
4. Another regional school in Victoria sunk a bore and put in 2 x H2O tanks (44,000 litres), we are going to cut off their bore, rip out their tanks and put in an admin building that takes up all the available space for the kids to play.
AAAAAAGGGGHHHhhhhhhhhh
Now, a builders margin normally sits at 5% these projects are sitting at 15%, plus exclusions and extras. This is a collasal f$!k up.
The civil works that kevvi claims credit for were tendered for, and accepted up to 3 years ago.
FFFFFfffffffaaaaaarrrrrrkkkkkk.
Obviously, i get a little p1ssed about this.
If they were tendered for and accepted up to three years ago who is responsible for the cockup?
Just askin'!
I can understand your pissedness.
Evening Kae,
Tendering for Govenment projects means you have to be on what's called a "Contractors Suppliers Register", that is you have to pre-qualify to meet their criteria (AS4801, ISO9001 & ISO/AS14001, OH&S/QA/Environment) you then become what is referred to as a preferred tenderer and submissions for Govt work are sent to you directly.
A standard tender is usually between 5 builders with a best price wins situation. Now here is where things get tricky. Basically when it comes to the contract stage your average pencil neck has no idea about contracts and that is where they get nailed, as an example we did a school (separate from this current debacle), they wanted the accepted price lower, we "excluded" mechanical air (air-con) which was a $650K saving. Now as an exclusion, which is part of our scope of works, means we have to do the air-con because it's part of our contract. Because it's excluded means instead of 5% margin we can add 200% margin, so on paper they saved $650K but it cost then $2.2M.
With some of the current civil works underway (roads etc) these were contracted subject to funding by the Government, that is no coin goues out until they said so. Federally it is DEEIR & funding is shared by the states DEIR (Education, Employment & Idustrial Relations) & (Employment & Idustrail Relations) or other state equivalent.
A friend of mine is the East Coast HSE Manager with a large(ish) Civil Contractor and for large scale civils this sort of time lag is not unusual due to the primary funding disputes.
A centralised bureaucracy is never going to do as good a job as decentralised decision making. The federal government should just stick to handing out an annual education voucher to every parent and get the f*&k out of education otherwise.
Blogger Boy on a bike said...
The federal government should just stick to handing out an annual education voucher to every parent and get the f*&k out of education otherwise.
Are you crazy?
How are we to control what and where they are being taught then?
JG
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