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The UK's Budget Bombshell: A Massive £1.3 Billion in Infrastructure Scrapped
45 Plays6 days ago
This week on the Off Site Podcast, Jason is joined by Sam Hanisch, who is filling in for Carlos while he's away at a wedding in South Africa. Together the duo have some big topics to discuss:
- The UK's recent budget announcement, and the construction project cancellations that have come with it.
- The challenges and importance of tracking production rates, even on those more complex construction projects.
- The recent competition to design the rebuild of war torn Kharkiv in Ukraine.
Follow Carlos on Linkedin | Follow Jason on Linkedin | Check out Aphex
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Transcript
Importance of Early Bad News in Project Management
00:00:00
Speaker
The thing that's um incredible is that i I couldn't think of anything that would piss the project manager off more than that. I mean, they would, I'm seeing it and these engineers, like they don't want to piss off the PM. They want them to be happy. A PM would rather get bad news, like 10% of the way into the work. They would be so happy. They would be like, yeah that's awesome. I'm so glad. Like we can do something about it. You know, we can spend some money, like we can forecast it. There's nothing.
00:00:28
Speaker
Nothing they hate more than, you know, that 80% of the way through and then suddenly someone nervously comes up at the whiteboard. They just come out of the like executive head office meeting where they've just said, yeah, our dates are very believable. We're definitely going to hit them.
00:00:46
Speaker
And then they walk into like the look ahead meeting and the engineer goes, that tarset was on track three days ago. We're going to push it out by two weeks. And then the worst thing is, is because they know they're delivering terrible news, the incentive is to underestimate the blowout again. Yeah. And so you'll do, it you'll do it again in two weeks time, a hundred percent.
Introduction to Offsite Podcast and Co-host Banter
00:01:12
Speaker
Good day, everyone. Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast. I'm Jason Lansini, and today we are joined by Sam Hanish, filling in for Carlos, who is on a double wedding um week away in South Africa. But luckily we've got ah awesome co-hosts and some decent topics to dive into. Samuel, how are you, sir? Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for having me back. Is he doing two weddings? He managed to put two weddings together.
00:01:40
Speaker
Uh, it's a, no, no, he hasn't pulled off one of the best planned trips to South for Gabriel ever. Uh, no, it's a traditional wedding. So I think it's like one um ah consecutive weekends is the the setup. I was telling someone the other day that like one wedding almost sent me broke. So I don't know how they do too.
00:02:01
Speaker
Sounds like it's going to send all the guests broke as well. Two weeks away. Yeah. It's a good setup for local tourism because anyone who is now got a week and a half of accommodation. That should be the, uh, we're just about to dive into UK, uh, UK budget and revenue raising measures. That could be, that should have been what they announced. All, all weddings in the UK an hour, uh, over two weekends. Yeah. I don't know what hit them worse, the budget or the wedding or way in South Africa.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, very
Analysis of UK Budget Announcement and Austerity Measures
00:02:31
Speaker
good. So we've got three things on the docket today. So first of all, we're going to tackle probably what is the hottest issue ah in the UK right now, which is the budget announcement from yesterday as we're recording this actually, where there are epic amounts of saving slash austerity measures, including about 1.3 billion worth of infrastructure projects chopped off the bat.
00:02:59
Speaker
So we're going to dive into that and see what what's affected and what's going to happen from here. Then we are going to shift gears and talk about, I'd say, a somewhat overlooked area of project management, certainly on some types of projects, which is production rates and tracking production rates. These are the things that drive ah how we build estimates and schedules and costs. And they often and often can fall out of focus as the project progresses along.
00:03:29
Speaker
Finally, we're going to dive into a um to say controversial, but ah possibly a good news story that just might have like a bit of an odd angle, which is a a recent announcement of a UK engineering design firm winning a design competition for the master planned reconstruction of Harkiv in Ukraine.
00:03:51
Speaker
So it's a
Impact of Cancelled UK Infrastructure Projects
00:03:52
Speaker
a fairly ambitious plan um run by a very, very well-known architects foundation, but it seems somewhat odd to be planning the reconstruction of the country while it's ah while it's still in the midst of a war.
00:04:08
Speaker
A lot to dig into and Sam happy for you to happy that you've joined for the convo mate. Should we dive straight in with this budget? Yeah, let's go. Bit of background, the yeah UK government announced its 2024 autumn budget where the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the cancellation of about 1.3 billion worth of infrastructure projects. This was part of a broader a strategy to address what was claimed to be about a 40 billion pound gap in the country's accounts. And what they're claiming is a 22 billion pound shortfall from the previous government.
00:04:46
Speaker
There are a bunch of things planned, which are include ah tax increases, which is not great for UK employers. ah A bunch of spending reductions where they've magically found almost 8 billion pounds in savings um across across different portfolios. And interestingly, the reduction of using external consultancy.
00:05:11
Speaker
Which seems like there's always money to be found there. The same thing happened in Australia a couple of years ago. Is that in the 8 billion? The 8 billion is consultancies plus across like government services? The 8 billion is what they labeled spending reductions across a whole bunch of portfolios or ministries. And
Personal Experiences and Notification Processes in Project Funding
00:05:29
Speaker
um that includes the reduction in reliance on external or consultancy spending. Yeah, I'd say that's a, no one's going to be upset with that.
00:05:40
Speaker
No, but it it does feel like that's the first thing that like goes. And it just seems weird that like, what why is that? If it's so easy to go and cut that, why is it there? They're also going to borrow some more money, which judging how interest rates are, that's going to result in some, some more pain down the road.
00:05:56
Speaker
So diving into the projects that are cancelled in as of the announcement and this comes off the back of previously a bunch of big projects being cancelled or kicked down the road, including the I think neilly nearly nearly 2 billion pound stonehenge tunnel.
00:06:12
Speaker
So the first is a ah project called the Port of Liverpool access, which was estimated value about 335 million pounds. Then there is the A358 taunts into Southfields, which was up to about 500 million pounds project that I think was sat with or possibly awarded to Vinci already. Yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
The M27 Junction 8 project, which was the smaller project, about 50 million, then another roundabout at Great Yarmouth, which is another 50 million pounds. And then ah this one's going to hurt a little bit, which is the A1 dueling to Northumberland. So it's the Morpah to Ellingham section at about 400 million pounds. That one had approval to go forward and I think Costane either had it or in early works or something on that as well.
00:07:02
Speaker
So today in the UK, there's some contractors that have got teams working on projects that don't exist anymore. You would imagine there would be hundreds of people that are earmarked to these jobs that are, you know, waking up to that news. I often wonder how early that they find out, like, do you think Vinci are sort of given the nudge three months in advance of this? Like you think, or hope surely that they're there's some, uh, preparation or planning there go, Hey, by the way, this might be coming up, but I really, I really don't know. Have you ever been on a project that's had the funding, uh, changed on it at this similar stage? No, not it.
00:07:44
Speaker
I've been on plenty where it's like, yep, you're going to get it, but I don't, I've never been on one where, and it's waiting sort of minister approval, but never been on one that's like, yep, it's a go and then gets pulled in a budget. Have you? oh
Shifting Project Funding Priorities and International Parallels
00:07:57
Speaker
No, I've never, but I, and over recent times, uh, I I'm thinking about a number of interactions with projects that were in similar, uh, spots that we'd worked with.
00:08:09
Speaker
Like I know that there was a section of um down in Melbourne, the the Melbourne airport rail section where that was basically awarded or the work that maybe it was like a limited to notice to proceed or something. There was a whole team basically mobilized on the thing.
00:08:26
Speaker
yeah ah And then I guess similar to what's happened in the UK, the first, so they definitely weren't told in advance. ah There was no pride because those things would get out immediately. So the second, yeah true the the second the government tries to do the right thing or do, you know, not the right thing, do them a favor. It's going to get out. So you you probably just have to tell everyone, but yeah, they, they basically find out with everyone else. Although what typically happens is you get the idea that it's under review.
00:08:56
Speaker
I don't know if you've if you're you recall in in Oz maybe almost a year ago now, there was that review over about $8 billion in spending across Australian projects. Yeah. The feds were sitting on reviewing it. There were a bunch of jobs that were not bought. Pretty much anything that had federal dollars attached was on hold until they finished that.
00:09:17
Speaker
Which, I mean, is probably a good thing. I think, you know, it makes me think about like la i don't dont if it was last year, but with the Melbourne budget, everyone in the industry assumed that suburban rail loop was going to get the bullet, like people working there. So I think it was probably would have been a similar atmosphere over there because I think everybody was assuming it was going to be a bad budget and there was probably going to be some projects here. So there was probably a bunch of jobs out there thinking, you know, people in the industry going,
00:09:45
Speaker
looking at what's out there coming up thinking some of these are going to get the bullet but you you know those two jobs there that's going to cost them it's not like it's a zero cost like there's going to be some cost there to those companies what's ah What's interesting is that yeah the everyone assumed that the ah one of the mega projects in Oz would get cancelled or descoped or value engineered. And they just ended up canceling a whole bunch of road projects around the place and putting even more money into the big mega project.
00:10:18
Speaker
And I
Broader Economic Implications of UK Budget
00:10:19
Speaker
was thinking about whether it's, yeah, exactly. Well, it's the classic like, uh, we want to put the money into the regions until, until we're actually short on money and then we'll just keep putting money where all the voters are. Uh, I think I wonder whether the same thing I was thinking about whether the same thing's happening here. Cause a lot of these, uh, projects are in the regions or as part of highways connecting cities.
00:10:43
Speaker
yeah ah And there's a separate conversation happening in the UK about maybe reinstigating the Northern section of HS2 and some ah money for HS2. So I wonder if this is just um the kind of freeing up some budget to put even more money into the the big project.
00:11:00
Speaker
I mean, at this point, like when you're delivering a budget that that is that tough, you imagine there's a lot of politics going into where this money is going, if any, if any, they got sitting around because it's all, you know, it's all good when there's heaps of cash and you can just throw it at large infrastructure projects and everyone's happy, everyone's working. um So yeah, I imagine there's a lot of politics going on at the moment. and On a non-construction note, um they've done the very sneaky way to do revenue raising which is ah not to increase income tax, ah not to increase corporation tax, but to
00:11:39
Speaker
increase the natural national insurance contributions. So in the UK, for those that are not from the UK, there's this national insurance contribution which gets paid by ah both employer and employee as a percentage of overall salary. They've increased that from about 13.8 to 15.8%, which is effectively like a payroll tax on employers.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, right. 2%. There was, I think I read analysts estimated that a one percentage point increase could yield about 8.5 billion a year. So 2% should be roughly double that, but that is definitely making ah employing people in the UK more expensive yet again.
00:12:18
Speaker
stifling growth and, you know, how hard, you know, trying to start a business and create jobs. And you've got this on top. Yeah. Especially with i don' ah not to get like too political, especially with the, uh, all signs pointing to potentially a Trump, uh, election in the, in the U S and the, uh, plan there for him to continue to reduce the corporation tax rate. Like it is heading in the opposite direction. Yeah.
00:12:44
Speaker
Anyway, uh, that is definitely all the news. I know you talked to some of our team in the UK this morning, just before we started recording this. And literally it's what everyone's talking about. Yeah. We're saying like, you kind of feel further. Isn't the chancellor whose face is attached to the, uh, I guess every news article, yeah that's a tough, that's a tough gig taken. That's a big bullet to take. It's going to be, uh, yeah. yeah just going to be there. Not very popular person for a while, but, um, yeah, I imagine a lot of people are really, uh, hurting about it, but. Do you reckon if you went into politics, you would be, you'd be thinking preemptively about like what the cartoon of you would look like?
00:13:26
Speaker
I think you think about a lot of things that's pretty low on the list. You've obviously thought about it, have you? No, no, no. Is that what's stopping you? You're like, ah, I don't know if I'm going to like the card. Yeah, no, uh, give me, oh, let's, uh, let me pencil in that tomorrow. I'll, uh, I'll give it some thought and then I'll come back to you on what I think it would be.
00:13:44
Speaker
It wouldn't be good. In the scheme of things though, one and a half billion pounds of work doesn't seem like a lot off the UK. It feels like with all the things that are going on, if they really needed to trim some stuff up, they could probably trim it up. But the numbers are up around like 100 billion worth of sort of 130 billion worth of active work and construction.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think it comes down to, um well, obviously if you can trim costs out of like ongoing kind of OpEx costs, like whatever you're paying to consultants or whatever, you're you're making that saving theoretically every year. And that's got a way bigger impact than the $1.3 billion dollars in commitments for specific projects in a one-off way.
00:14:30
Speaker
yeah um But then again, the 1.3 billion is adding potentially, I think they're raising or they're at least raising this like debt ceiling equivalent thing of about 50 billion. So that 1.3 billion is theoretically going straight onto national debt, which is going to be, that's hundreds of millions a year in interest. Those things add up. You've got to cut some things.
00:14:55
Speaker
yeah So anyway, that is a hot topic in the UK today. That's the take of two Aussies on it. You know nothing about economics. Let's
Role and Challenges of Production Rates in Project Management
00:15:06
Speaker
jump forward. Okay. Next topic. There's something we do know about, or at least you do, or I'm going to pretend to.
00:15:12
Speaker
Core of project project management is production rates. They're something that is the starting point for any contractor tendering a job and thinking about the idea of how much is it going to cost to build this bridge or this tunnel or this road. You have to start by working out the work that needs to be done and then thinking about how long it's going to take and what resources you've taken. At the core of that is some assumption of X number of widgets, X number of panels per hour or per day.
00:15:39
Speaker
But in well in my experience, and and I guess in projects that we've seen around the world, that connection to the idea of that production rate being a core determinant of whether you're making or losing money as a contractor starts to become less tracked the closer to construction project delivery you get.
00:16:04
Speaker
especially on jobs that are not very clearly production type jobs. I would say there are certain jobs which are very much production type jobs and they're managing production rates every day ah constantly. Let's start with like your thoughts on production rates in general and why and how they might get like lost in the day to day of especially big projects that are doing different things every day.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, when you, when you start to think about the delivery of work and you know, what are you, I guess, what's a consistent thing you see across all jobs. When you're looking at what you're trying to achieve, you're sort of price a piece of work. And then when you're delivering it, you're trying to really like, you know, ideal scenario, you deliver on the budget, you make, you know, you make a bit of extra on top of that. And.
00:16:55
Speaker
Everything that sort of defines that, you know, what, what we price and how we're going to get there generally is like, there's half of the, at least it's some form of production rate. And so when you're in there and delivering the work, often these tasks are, you know, months on end or, you know, there's a duration of time they're often not made up of day by day activities.
00:17:19
Speaker
And so when it comes down to it every day, especially as a project manager or construction manager, you're really, you're an engineer that owns a Costco. your fear factor is you're getting to the end of the month and you have no idea where you're at. ah You might be delivering a piece of work that's going to take four months. And so you're trying to work out day to day, how are we tracking? Like, are we are we doing well? Are we not? And so when you break it down to the smallest piece, you're you're really trying to get a picture of, well, are we on target today or are we?
00:17:51
Speaker
And so the production track in super powerful, you really like distilling down these huge costs that build up these projects into like a daily element or some sort of. you know, some sort of metric that you can then get someone to track and it's going to give you at least a better, you know, an indication of where you're at. Um, otherwise you sort of, you know, when you look at an activity, you go, if you don't have a production rate, how do you work out where you're at? You're going, well, I, I think it's going to take this many days longer, but you know, your manager's asking you, how did you work that out? Like what's, is that just on your field or, you know, wherever you got that information?
00:18:29
Speaker
um So yeah, it's I mean, it's super powerful. if if I can't think of really, you know you could look at civil construction, 80% of what you do, you could probably come up with some sort of production metric that you could track that's gonna give you a better indication than just forward planning the amount of time left to complete a task. So super powerful.
00:18:53
Speaker
But you you find like there's a, you know, if if we're if we're doing a pipeline or where're we're doing some kind of ah fairly ah conventional civil or earthworks type of project or a multi-span bridge, projects will tend towards doing production rate tracking um pretty intuitively. And then for some reason you get to like a a kind of multidisciplinary ah project, especially a very big project.
00:19:24
Speaker
And it's like, uh, it's like, it's not even thought about sometimes, um, and people are going back to kind of, okay, the plan is you and me engineer supervisor. And we just kind of think, right half, how long is this going to take? how Do you agree with how much long it's going to take? And that's kind of our plan. Yeah. And I think there's like a logical, there's a logical justification for that, which is.
00:19:47
Speaker
on very large projects, the overhead of the project is very large. And so the cost of time is very large. And so when you're balancing, uh, cost to lay X number of widgets or whatever it is, um, the, the, the getting it done on time is much more valuable than like the, the, uh, the cost to do it. Um,
00:20:17
Speaker
But I don't think that's the reason why it doesn't happen. i I think that the reason it doesn't happen is because the work that we're doing today and this week looks different to what we're doing next week and what looks different to what we're doing the week after. yeah I think people are often not like stepping back and thinking about what's like the common element of production through the work.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I think people, like when you say production rate, you just, you sort of lock to, it feels natural when you're doing, you know, pipeline for four months and you go, well, we'll we'll do production rate planning or, you know, you're laying out material for four or five weeks.
00:20:53
Speaker
But i mean and I think that it comes down to we associate um naturally when we want to understand cost, we want to look at production tracking and it's usually tied to something that we sell before.
00:21:10
Speaker
And I think a lot of the reason you don't see it in these large infrastructure projects is because, you know, more and more as we go through time now, it's less that you see these big company self-performing work from a risk profile. It just doesn't make sense. They're not geared up to sort of have the plan and equipment to, you know, build as efficiently, unless that's their core business. There's now a lot of, you know, small, I'm thinking of like earth moving drainage, those sorts of things. You just see less now that companies self-perform that work.
00:21:40
Speaker
And so I think the natural tendency is when it's not self-performed that you just don't, you're like, oh, it's not my risk anymore. I've sort of transferred that over to someone else. Um, when in reality that you still are in the time risk on it. So you've handed over the cost, but the time's still your problem. And so.
00:21:56
Speaker
ah You often see this thing where, you know, the engineer who's been used to just delivering Paki like subcontracting workout, and they're really great at managing contract. When these you have huge overruns on these projects, and when it comes down to it, it's, you know, the subbies like, you know, maybe you've stitched them up, they're not getting the variations, they've lost a lot of money, but at the end of the day, it's your project, your life. um And those sort of fundamentals around production,
00:22:24
Speaker
you know, early on, if you, you can apply it, even if it's a sub new package, you can apply production planning. And it's probably going to tell you more than anything else that I, we're, we're looking like we're going to be late. We need to do something about it. Even if it's, you know, not my risk from a cost perspective, we're still going to be late. One of the, um,
Understanding Production Rates for Effective Management
00:22:42
Speaker
one of the interesting things, and this is ah a little bit of a tangent that just riffing off what you were saying. There is, um, you know, when you've got one primary or two primary, uh,
00:22:54
Speaker
activities that are happening on a project, um, at a time, it's kind of easy conceptually to go, right. This, this area is like driving piles. This area is putting in bridge decks or whatever. And we're going to measure that production rate. Yeah. When you have kind of these multi-disciplinary big projects, um, there can be so many competing things that need to happen. Um, that.
00:23:19
Speaker
ah Almost the the the way that the job is conceptualized leads to this problem. I guess what I mean is if you're trying to do, sometimes if you're trying to do the job as efficiently as possible, you're probably prioritizing like the flow of those activities yeah so that you've got piling production maximized, you've got a deck installation maximized or whatever it is.
00:23:48
Speaker
yeah And ah when you build a schedule for a project that has all of these competing interests to hit a deadline, you start delivering a project not as efficiently as possible. You're delivering it like as theoretically quick as possible.
00:24:05
Speaker
um And I guess that touches on this like the big meta argument about CPM versus other methods of of scheduling. yeah But um it becomes hard when your schedule all the way that you need to deliver the project isn't optimized for driving production because you naturally can have these spots where a contractor or your self-delivery team hit like, okay, we can't, you know, for this period, there's just, we can't continue the production because some other activity needs to happen or, or, you know, there's like competing interests in an area. Yeah. I mean, at some point you have to sacrifice, like you can't just do one thing continuously to maximize the efficiency on that because, you know, pretty much unless it's a pipeline job, you know, a big long pipeline, go for your life.
00:24:57
Speaker
um the most of these jobs now where, you know, five competing elements, it's musical chairs. Like your quickest way to the end is finding some sort of happy medium where they all get their scope done in the quickest way possible. I think though there's still so like, even in those scenarios, there's something to be said for having an understanding of your production, even if it's not. And I think often that's the time that's a lot of what a lot of project managers want to see is that.
00:25:25
Speaker
they're, you know, engineers that own scope understand their rates at least. Like they have an understanding that this is how I'm performing, even if it's just a small piece of work, because I think it really shows, you know, if you know that, then you really have a good ah grasp of like where you're going to be, what's happening ah as part of your work. So I think there's something to be said having to be an engineer to have that in your toolkit and to be thinking about those sorts of things, even if it doesn't make sense for like one element.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah. hundred percent Like even,
Reiterating the Need for Early Issue Identification
00:25:55
Speaker
even if, even if when the job was tender, they had no way because of the, the competing nature of how production was going to happen. Even if what your production that you're planning doesn't really reflect what the job was tended at. It's definitely in the micro, very beneficial to have a, I think it's going to take that long because it's 400 widgets and we're going to do 40 per day or whatever. Yeah. um So, so maybe thinking about it from like an engineer's or construction manager's toolkit. Um, there's almost like two elements to the production rate. There is, uh, what, what we plan to do from a production perspective, which then validates the duration that we think it's going to take. And then there's the other side of like what we actually did so we can start to measure against that. Um,
00:26:49
Speaker
If you're thinking about, let's imagine we're on one of these really complex projects, there is lots of competing types of production happening. I don't know, let's pick a complex one. We're doing a like launch box for a TBM. How would you think about setting up or thinking about ah how you can use production rates to yeah better understand the the performance of the the scope of work?
00:27:15
Speaker
yeah I guess like you're sort of looking at your program for that portion of work, you're trying to find things that are repeatable, like they're pieces of work that are going to take a while. So there's probably a lot of excavation there. So you would want to understand some sort of metric about how much dirt you're pulling out and whether it's getting treated, cut it off site, that sort of thing.
00:27:36
Speaker
You'd be looking at your critical path to deliver that work and you'd be looking at the things that are close that critical path to go, all right, what are the key things that if we don't hit them, what's going to drive out data? Um, definitely things that you can measure and get sort of an update. I think that what I've seen on a lot of projects is that.
00:27:56
Speaker
Everyone knows that it's sort of this, you're never going to be able to chase down this dream of having all these metrics just sitting there, getting constantly updated day to day. Like it's expecting that's all it's just yeah the robots, what they usually do. What's that?
00:28:10
Speaker
No, I was just going to say that, that was the other thing that I was just noting as you were talking was like, what you're describing is also that like production rates can be ephemeral. They can like come and they can be relevant for a certain part of the job, but sometimes it's ah impossible to have right for the entire length of this project. We're going to track rebar installed or something. And that's like our, that's our key production rate. They can come and go. Yeah. And like what I've seen that works very successfully is.
00:28:39
Speaker
Having an, I guess, understanding your program, you sort of task groups of your team to report on key things. So, you know, the end of the earthworks team is reporting on, you know, how much dirt they've moved out as sort of production and are they on track or are they behind? And I think having that giving something to each team, some teams are carrying more because it's close to the critical path or it's more measurable, but it sort of instills this expectation that you have a full understanding of what you're doing each day and how you're getting there.
00:29:09
Speaker
And even if you don't have the full picture, you can just imagine compared to a job where you sort of just looking at, all right, how much duration to go, like I measured how much quantity that team that's doing the production tracking is for sure going to get to that, you know, that milestone quicker, more effectively with a better grasp of their costs than the team. That's just every month, every measuring quantity to go, they see their costs today. And then they just sort of take that rate and push it out.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, the the number the number one benefit of the production rate is you definitely fight back against the theyre like common pattern, which is activities getting like 80, 90% through duration and then blowing out by like a week or two weeks or whatever.
00:29:56
Speaker
yeah By tracking the production rate, you start seeing the the the the hill to climb. you know It's like, okay, in order to finish on that date, now production rate has to go from 100 per day to 150. Oh, now it has to go to 200 per day. At some point, someone's going to go, our trend over the last 10 days was 50. I don't think we're going to do the four times.
00:30:21
Speaker
The thing that's um
Project Management Tip: Early Issue Identification
00:30:22
Speaker
incredible is that i I couldn't think of anything that I would piss the project manager off more than that. I mean, they would, I'm seeing it and these engineers, like they don't want to piss off the PM. They want them to be happy. A PM would rather get bad news, like 10% of the way into the work. They would be so happy. They would be like, yeah that's awesome. I'm so glad. Like we can do something about it. You know, we can spend some money, like we can forecast it. There's nothing.
00:30:49
Speaker
nothing they hate more than, you know, that 80% of the way through and then suddenly someone nervously comes up at the whiteboard. They just come out of the like executive head office meeting where they've just said, yeah, our dates are very believable. We're definitely going to hit them.
00:31:06
Speaker
And then they walk into like the look ahead meeting and the engineer goes, that task that was on track three days ago, we're going to push it out by two weeks. And then the worst thing is, is because they know they're delivering terrible news, the incentive is to underestimate the blowout again. So you'll do, it you'll do it again in two weeks time, a hundred percent. I think, um, I think the sooner engineers learn that, like, you know, understand your scope, uh, PMS love it. Even bad news is better than that. That's the last thing they want. There we go. Sam's LinkedIn post for the week. Bad news early. something about Bad news early is good news. Cause the bad news is inevitable, isn't it? Like, I don't think,
UK Firm's Role in Harkiv's Reconstruction Design
00:31:47
Speaker
uh, I don't think they tell you that, but like you do a key project. So I don't think there's such thing as no bad news on a job. So it's not to get in front of it.
00:31:56
Speaker
Okay, there we go, tips. right All right, let's move on before we run out of time. So final topic on the docket is a little bit out of wheelhouse, but we'll have some well have some discussion about anyway. the The story in the news ah as it happened recently is that a a UK engineering firm or a UK engineer recently won an award for an international competition, it was essentially arranged by a group called the Norman Foster Foundation. And the competition is essentially a design competition focused around the master plan of Harkiv, which yeah some estimates say has been like 70% damaged or destroyed as part of the the war with Russia.
00:32:43
Speaker
So the competition was this international competition of architects to submit designs to basically not only restore ah the city, um but kind of reimagine the city as this like symbol of resilience and community. For some background, norman foster ah so the the body holding it was the Norman Foster Foundation.
00:33:03
Speaker
Norman Foster is a extremely famous English architect. He's designed some of my favorite buildings in the world. So, uh, it's called the Gherkin in London, uh, 30 St. Mary Axe, and also Apple Park, uh, in Cupertino.
00:33:20
Speaker
This firm, his firm Foster & Partners is one of the largest architectural firms in the world. So I guess the discussion around this award probably boils down to her foot to, to kind of pracie our discussion off air was like, it seems like there's some good thought and ideas behind it and some value to doing it.
00:33:40
Speaker
Uh, on the flip side, it seems possibly a little bit in bad taste to be holding design competitions of architects from around the world. Telling park even about how they should rebuild the city while they're still fighting to have a country. Yeah. Over to you. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll do this video. I mean.
00:34:04
Speaker
Like you look at the, uh, so the competition attracted 259 entries from 53 countries, which is incredible. And 27 from Ukraine. And so I guess it's, I think it's like a lot of things where you've got architects. and I'm not going to jab at architects, but it's, if you spoke to the majority of people from our queue.
00:34:26
Speaker
would they give a flying fuck about these things? i like Is this top of mind to them? I think it's nice. I think it's nice that they're putting thoughts. I think that the mayor going out and reaching out the international community and people thinking about rebuilding the city, I think for a lot of people would be you know a nice sign of hope or you know what will be in the future.
00:34:49
Speaker
But at the present, you know, that's not, uh, I think like there's, and there's other priorities. So the there all these things yeah, the the flip side is like, ah this is, this is, uh, intentionally, uh, over inflammatory, but like.
00:35:05
Speaker
the local drug dealer sponsoring um sponsoring kids football match. is like It is nice that they're sponsoring the football match, but is it is it with the expectation or to generate future business?
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah. Cause at some point there's a lot of work in actually rebuilding, uh, Ukraine. So, uh, I know that the, the foundation and the, and normal foster, I think I read that it's like pro bono to run the competition. I don't know if those submitting, uh, submissions were doing it pro bono. I think possibly it would make sense that they are given the number of them. Oh yeah. I would say so.
00:35:47
Speaker
But is it just bidding on a job? Like, I often think that as an architecture firm, there's an amount of work that you're doing just to get your sort of designs out there and highlight it. And so this sort of, I don't know if you call it, I guess it is a competition. But yeah, it's like, there's an amount of money that I think architecture firms are assuming to sink into doing things that they're never going to win, um just to be sort of invited to say that they were part of that.
00:36:15
Speaker
Um, but it is a lot of entries. I think that, you know, in the end, like it's the mayor of Hakiya who's asked for this. Like, does he have the ability to then go and bankroll this job? Like, you know, is the government behind exactly? Like it's not a real, it's not a real thing. Like the, the likelihood that this is going to like an ounce of this is going to progress through to a final design. It's like less than 1%. I would
Criticism and Relevance of Design Competition Amid Conflict
00:36:40
Speaker
say, um,
00:36:42
Speaker
but so I think it's you know there's other reasons to do it um but uh I doubt you know I doubt any of them are putting it in their forecast that they're going to win you know some sort of job out of this yeah the the other um the other I guess uh criticism of the the whole approach, which obviously then was won by a uk so it was hosted by like originally UK. The body hosting it is based in Madrid, but the yeah it's the foundation of a UK architect. And it was won by a UK architect or engineering firm. yeah So there is the criticism that like
00:37:21
Speaker
The architecture style is like being imposed on the city. They don't have local context or knowledge. I think I read, I did read that Norman Foster had never even been to Arcade before. So it was just like, like inventing a competition for like, ah not only just like for designing a building, it's like master planning the city. It's like a design they would do for sort of like a new area of London and they're trying to like,
00:37:48
Speaker
healing Harkiv from rubble to renewal and they base their design out of sourcing concrete and materials from destroyed structures. Like are they going to pull the missile and bullet casings out? It feels like the type of thing that would win an award in a major capital anywhere in the world, but it just doesn't feel right for a country at war. And that's how you're sort of, it feels a bit tasteless.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, i I think there's also, if it ever got built, you end up with that risk of like, you end up with this one little bit that's been rebuilt and then the rest of the rest, like probably just spread spread the money around ah instead of spending all the money on the the big thing in the middle. Yeah, I mean comparatively to what we talked about where they were going for ah putting a plan together for the ah country to hit a carbon neutral target 2050. That feels way better than this. This feels very much like flexing um and everyone patting themselves on the back of the architecture space. but
00:38:48
Speaker
wait that's just my yeah yeah yeah yeah ah we we We definitely hope the underlying idea is ah is genuine and that the actual output is useful and valuable yeah and it's not just a you know, let's host a competition for who can master plan the moon, just so that we can have a publicity announcement of here's what i guess it's going to look like. I guess the other way to look at it is it, is it better that it happened than it didn't happen? If it makes
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:39:20
Speaker
a bunch of people happy, like then, you know, it's not like, I don't know if it's hurting anyone. I don't know how many people are going to be truly offended. So they play on. that's play yeah Okay. Good. Right. There we wrap on there. So.
00:39:31
Speaker
um Thank you very much everyone for listening. Thank you, Sam, for joining. If you like this episode, please subscribe and tell your friends. We appreciate the feedback and see you all the next one. by Bye-bye.