Free straw houses for everyone.
As your reference is more relevant here…
Those 15,000 thousand rooms, for the most part, are either well under construction or at a developed stage. I can’t speak for all the developments, but I’m involved in approx 600 of those rooms in 3 developments, two of them not even on site but the contractor in place. All private entities where all the contracts were negotiated rather than in a competitive tender. Why is this relevant?
Well under any state funded projects, all projects must be tendered under EU regulations and not restricted. More often than not, it ends up being a race to the bottom where cost is key, not quality. So the knock on effect of this is that builders and labour are paid at the lowest possible rates. So if you have large developments where quality is key or a choice to where cost is, then the more attractive project will be the private development and not the public one. Labour and trades are thin on the ground, they can pick and choose their work.
With the recent ‘boom’ of state funded schools about 5-10 years ago, an awful lot of builders stopped pricing these as it was utterly pointless and the potential to lose money was huge. As a percentage, projects going on hold during construction because of a Builder going bust was massive in state funded School projects, simply because the cost tendered was way too low and the criteria to win a project wasn’t invasive enough to be able eliminate a contractor. It’s a massive flaw of the current government form of contract and hopefully it does get seriously amended. Until it does, a choice of working on a state funded or private funding project will only go one way.
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Informative… No wonder you had your own box at Anfield last week.
As someone in the buildung trade, what way will you be voting?
Are you up for #gaffs?
#gaffs all the way.
Most likely labour, independents will get top end of my voting. The Sinn Fein candidate in wexford is beyond useless and it wouldn’t even be a protest vote getting him in, it would be a massive waste of time. The Fianna Fail candidates in wexford are actually reasonably decent candidates, but I couldn’t bring myself to vote them high. Darcy for Fine Gael is decent, but Kehoe is useless.
To get back to construction discussion tho, comparing private developments already in process to a massive hike in public construction doesn’t simply mean the availability of trades and labour must be there. It would need a reduction in private development to cope and as I said, I don’t think those out there now would choose a state funded project over a private one and you’d be left with poor quality work. We already had plenty of poor quality housing completed.
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So what incentives do you think would entice them to build public?
I think the reality is somewhat changed now. The perception still remains that etenders is a race to the bottom. Had a €3m HSE job where only one tender came back fron a short list of 8. Contractor was €400k above the approved budget, happy days for him.
I worked on a 48-Classroom and a 32-Classroom school where it was a 2-stage tender. Contractors had to pre qualify based on qualititive criteria prior to the pricing stage.
The Department of Education actually have a very good set of design team procedures, they were the one department who didn’t allow risk dumping on contractors, remeasurable BQs etc.
I’ve worked a good bit with the PWC, if the tender docs are good then they are workable. At least you don’t get a load of extras fired in at the end of the job!!
I would always recommend price/quality as a means of assessment.
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Yeah it’s been a while since I worked on a public works contract, last one was a housing development about 4 years ago.
But your point about one return from 8 issued somewhat reinforces the point that public sector work at the moment isn’t massively attractive. I was on a job once where the contractor stuck in a cover price just to keep appearance up, but ended up winning it. Job just fell into his lap really.
Whilst the race to the bottom may be changed now, I think the first few years of the new form and the way tenders went has caused the apathy that is there now.
As for incentives for public works, I do think the contract needs changing. To what, I’m not sure, but it was brought in to curtail over expenditure and greedy builders but is now causing builders too much hassle to be worth it. Maybe more design and build projects where the marking scheme and MEAT evaluation is as much about the design as the end cost, they get the benefit of private type development work but under public sector guidelines. That may cause problems as it could lead to wink nod push to a favoured team, but at least quality would be to the forefront as much as cost.
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@Gman for someone who has read the election manifestos and policies, why did you waste your vote on Independents? They don’t have national policies.
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Ended up only voting one independent in my top 5 after. As much as my own personal interest is mainly on construction/housing, there is more to the election than just that.
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You could have wasted your vote on FG. Only 13% of their voters care about housing.
FG lads just can’t understand that lads might vote based on reasons outside their personal interests.
Depressing. More housing - in this case it would seem 100% social housing - delayed/stopped for a range of spurious reasons.
Whatever gov gets in will face this challenge on project after project, causing delays and missed targets.
This is the usual thing. People want social (public) housing built. But just not in their estate. I was on one in Kilkenny and residents there opposed it vociferously and even during construction made it is awkward as possible.
Free gaffs for all, but just make sure you don’t build them near near us
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This is what a culture of home ownership does. Home owners are the enemy.
Was that the one on the Kells Road, Rose Hill or something? I think I remember people getting all hot and bothered there
Yeah, and not just social housing, another article in the IT today about planning granted for apartments beside Vincents hospital despite strong local opposition.
This thread on twitter is pretty interesting on where houses are being built (bottom line, in the wrong places). I suspect entrenched local opposition, in addition to higher costs, is a large part of the problem.
That was it. 6 houses went in, you’d swear it was a ghetto being built.
David McWilliams has been phoning it in for a long number of years but he hit the nail on the head the other week. A culture of house ownership creates a divide between house owners and non-house owners. House owners sadly tend to measure their wealth in the market value of their house (even though if it’s a hoome they will likely never realise that value) and therefore when anything comes along that threatens the market value of that house, they will tend to object.
If Eoin O’Broin get in he’ll end up paying over market values in order to secure freeholds (can’t be long term leases at less the price, they’re the enemy) on the many large developments under construction.
The next Ballymun awaits in the likes of Adamstown (where a significant portion is supposed to be Part V Housing as is). There’ll be a distinct lack of culture as SF have no budget for that in their manifesto and the Bernard Shaw crew will he scratching their head as to what went wrong in a decade.
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