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The Grand Paris Express: Building the World's Longest Orbital Metro
36 Plays3 days ago
Join Jason and Carlos in this episode of The Offsite Podcast as they explore three topics from the world of construction:
🚇 Grand Paris Metro: Europe's most extensive metro project - a €40 billion transformation with 200km of new lines, 68 stations, and a 75km orbital line. This project aims to create multiple business hubs across Paris, reduce central congestion, and serve 7 million daily riders by 2030 using driverless trains and innovative single-bore tunnel designs.
📉 Boom-Bust Cycles in Construction: Examine the pattern of boom-bust cycles that severely impact construction. From initial surges triggered by low interest rates to labor shortages, cost inflation, and eventual downturns when funding dries up. With data center spending doubling in 2024 and $300 billion planned for 2025, is this sustainable growth or the next bubble?
🏢 Manhattan's New Prison Complex: Tudor Perini's $3.8 billion project replacing Rikers Island with a modern 1,000-inmate facility in Manhattan. Scheduled for completion in 2032, this represents New York City's shift toward more rehabilitation-focused correctional facilities despite the premium cost of prime Manhattan real estate.
Key Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
03:06 - Grand Paris Metro Project
13:03 - Boom-Bust Cycle Discussion
27:56 - Manhattan Prison Complex
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Transcript
Introduction to Rikers Island and Podcast Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
the plan is to shut down Rikers Island, which is famously one of the most dangerous prisons in the US. It's been all sorts of folks have served time at Rikers, including, fun fact, I did some brief research prior.
00:00:18
Speaker
ah The assassin of John Lennon was housed at Rikers Island, son of Sam, the serial killer in the 70s. Tupac, Shakur and who else was good to pull off this list?
00:00:32
Speaker
Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne was Not small names. I can't believe we just, yeah. Was that a little was that a little joke?
00:00:45
Speaker
Small names. You come from, about yeah, people who assassinate presidents to Lil Wayne in one sentence. Did you just call Lil Wayne?
00:00:56
Speaker
That's so British of you. ah
00:01:06
Speaker
Welcome back to the Offsite Podcast. I'm Jason Lanzini and I'm joined once again by Carlos Carralo.
Episode Topics: Metro Projects and Construction Cycles
00:01:14
Speaker
Today, we are diving into Europe's biggest metro project, not the one in the UK, the one in Paris, the Grand Paris Metro.
00:01:24
Speaker
And looking at some of the sections of that project that are just kicking off and getting rolling. Then we're going to dive into the discussion and follow on from last week around this idea of like boom and bust cycle in major construction and what that kind of tells us about the future of some of the the markets that are currently we're seeing booming.
00:01:48
Speaker
And then finally, we're going to finish on a new 3.8 billion US dollar prison project being built in the heart of Manhattan. So a fun spot for a site visit, but not a spot you kind of want to visit for any other reason.
Cultural and Language Anecdotes
00:02:04
Speaker
Carlos, welcome back, mate. How are ya? Just regretting the size of the lunch that I ate an hour ago at the moment. Okay, too much info. My eyes are heavier and heavier, but we're past that now, lessons lab.
00:02:15
Speaker
How are you? I'm good. I'm ah and back in Germany after a lovely couple days in London last week. It was nice to head over, get to speak to some people in English for a bit.
00:02:27
Speaker
I did find myself in found myself in a grocery store ah saying Danke to someone, so I didn't even know where I was at that point. Generally, is it is English well-spoken in the area of Germany that you're in?
00:02:40
Speaker
like could became I'm not saying it's like they're bad at it. It's just not the commonly spoken. yeah yeah And if you, like me, struggle to consistently speak in quite deep sentences. German and an Australian accent on top of the English language. Yeah, yeah, yeah. you're hit You'll definitely hit people that kantt you both i can't converse very well.
00:03:02
Speaker
Okay, cool.
The Grand Paris Metro Project Overview
00:03:03
Speaker
Let's dive right in off the bat. So this is, in researching this, has been a really truly found fascinating infrastructure project underway in the heart of Europe.
00:03:15
Speaker
Also got the coolest name, the Grand Paris Metro Project. It's not a metro project as most people would understand. It's not a few new stations or extending you know a line or two.
00:03:26
Speaker
This is a ah like a decade-long transformation of the Paris metro system with the construction of 200 kilometers of new lines, 68 new stations, and the extension of several existing lines.
00:03:42
Speaker
It is one of the largest infrastructure projects in Europe. I think at the time that the investment was made of around 35 billion euros, probably I think creeping up towards 40 at this point, it was the largest infrastructure investment in Europe with the goal to create this more in-connected, ah um efficient and accessible metro system for the greater Paris region.
Engineering Challenges in Paris Metro
00:04:07
Speaker
There are so many areas of interest to dive into here. I spent an inordinate amount of time ah researching the project. There are all sorts of different lines. There's this line 15 that has um a bunch of different section, line 16, line 17. And ultimately, I think the main thing is creating this like ah new kind of like orbital ring um of of Metro around the city. Carlos, what were your thoughts in looking into it? It's pretty impressive, it?
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's obviously it is massive. And for anyone that obviously has visited Paris, you don't really notice the problem that is now apparent from what they're building because tourists tend to stay in that very central bubble in the middle, which is pretty well connected. There's a lot of tube lines and station in a very dense area.
00:04:56
Speaker
But as you go out and out, it kind of there's a lot of those you'd have to go into the city and back out again rather than being able to sort of move around in like an orbital sense. So yeah, there's a huge amount of stations and track going in.
00:05:09
Speaker
It's a seriously big project, especially when you take into account where I think the the maximum output they were getting from their TBMs was 12 meters a day. There's 200 kilometers of new track. 90% is underground. that That's a lot of days of a TBM moving. There were 30 active TBMs, I believe, at one point. Yeah, so they're all slowly away.
00:05:29
Speaker
but yeah a lot of track and also say from like an engineering point of view the deepest station is 50 meters deep 50 meters is what we famously like to do that's seven swimming pools deep that's one olympic swimming pool on his head was that 25 meters i'm not sure its definitely But ah for context, I think the deepest the Jubilee line goes here, which is one of the complexities with the Elizabeth line, is It's double that depth.
00:06:04
Speaker
yeah um but Yeah, building a box to that depth is no mean feat with like, yeah, pressure, water, et cetera.
Impact on Paris: Hubs, Real Estate, and Sustainability
00:06:13
Speaker
The design of the the network was like really interesting to me um because the problem that they're they're kind of trying to solve is all these lines that head into kind of central stations then back out again.
00:06:26
Speaker
And ah in different cities around the world, that's like as a sort of metro network evolves, you kind of see that problem of like the first lines kind of go across and then eventually you get to this spot. Like a dartboard. Yeah, yeah.
00:06:40
Speaker
When you look at it on its own, you go, you know, you think about whether or not, well, one of the benefits of say like a a London where there is kind of a lot of lines going across, it means that you can go kind of from anywhere from one side to the other quite efficiently.
00:06:56
Speaker
ah you start looking at the design and go, you know, who wants to go from this suburb over to this suburb, kind of like a across. And I started like thinking about it in my own mind. And when I was looking into it, it's like, is it, you know, should I be thinking about it as kind of like Paris's circle line? you know, if I was to draw like a London Underground equivalent.
00:07:15
Speaker
But it's important to know that this thing goes like in the suburbs, not like the central line in London. For those that know London, it's like quite a central London circle. I think it's like 25 or 26 kilometer loop.
00:07:29
Speaker
This is a 75 kilometer loop in line 15 that is being looped around. It's the world's longest orbital metro. That's a start I would never have thought I would have known.
00:07:42
Speaker
you start to think like, what's the goal? Because that's like a long way out, right? The the benefit of the circle line is connecting some of these these lines that come into the center without having to go to like one station or two central stations. You can kind of, you can cut across from one to the other.
00:07:56
Speaker
This one being so far out, it starts to have a totally different use case. ah The goal that Paris has is to create this kind of um multi-hubbed city so that there isn't just a single hub in the center, um that it it unlocks the ability to create all of these you know multiple business districts across the the city, which has a totally different effect on like house prices and where people live, et cetera. So the idea is to create many hubs across the city and not just this one
00:08:29
Speaker
central um pressure which has implicit interesting like consequences or ah overlaps with you know paris famously has like a development height limit so there's only so much density you can kind of pack into the center as well yeah um i don't know if you've ever driven into paris but those suburban areas around the city are pretty rough yeah um you get a sense they are sort of neglected by everything being so centralized in the in the middle So yeah yeah, you'd imagine it would give a lot more opportunity for everything that then regenerates an area to take place when you have good transport.
00:09:05
Speaker
So feel like it's very much needed. Yeah. the yeah it's ah It's also interesting that it is it's fully driverless train system with the goal to tackle 3 million daily vehicles. commuters ah by
Paris Metro Completion and Economic Impacts
00:09:22
Speaker
2030.
00:09:22
Speaker
ah And what's interesting, again, comparing to the London Underground is the spacing of stations. So the average spacing of stations ah is about 500 meters, whereas in London, they're like 1.2 kilometers. So yeah, it creates this idea that like anyone is in a five minute walk to the station along the the route.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, the only one that seemed to have a more dense was New York. New York, London and Paris all have roughly 400 kilometers of track. But London's got 270 stations, Paris has 300 and something after this, and New York has nearly 500 stations, all of the same sort of length of track.
00:10:04
Speaker
so What was also interesting there is like when this project is completed by 2030, the goal is to have the daily ridership across the whole network go to something like 7 million, which puts it ah even further ahead of like a London Underground, which I think is something like five.
00:10:21
Speaker
yeah um And from a tourist point of view, yeah France has the most tourists in any country in the world. It's more than the US, s more than China um in terms of annual visitors. So yeah they're going to make back a lot of that money pretty quickly from tourists using the network in terms of an investment point of view.
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah, even though I think most of this is like targeted at residents. But it alleviates the congestion on the tourist center by having effective... Yeah, massively. and I think, yeah, getting these like other hubs away totally keeps the the center like not, you don't have like the the business district competing with the the tourist district.
00:10:58
Speaker
People don't need to commute into that same area. ah It also unlocks, there's a whole bunch of sustainability and, you know, um yeah, sustainability goals associated with this around like vehicles and vehicles off the road.
00:11:13
Speaker
One of the trade-offs of the spacing and the design of the system is that the speeds of the rail are definitely like slower. um I think it's like something like maybe half the speed of some of the London Underground lines.
00:11:28
Speaker
So you end up needing this kind of mix of like, yeah, faster things. And because you always have a lot of stops along these routes. So it'd be an interesting experience to try and like plan a commute there once once finished to see whether, yeah, how it feels compared to other metro networks.
00:11:45
Speaker
the Yeah. yeah the so For final point, it was quite interesting how they're doing one bore with two tracks inside. It's quite unusual. um Most seem to be twin bored and you wonder whether that's like you go from 200 to 400 kilometers of tunnel that needs to be built um or if there's another reason.
00:12:06
Speaker
but um Yeah, trains will pass each other within those tubes um going in each direction. Yeah, yeah that's actually that was super interesting, the the the kind of side-by-side configuration.
00:12:18
Speaker
the So there are a bunch of sections that have been phased opening through 2024, and then a number of other lines, I think line 15 in particular is planned to complete around 20,
00:12:33
Speaker
And then there are a couple of other sections that are pushing out or like I think optional extensions or additional elements that would will happen later, but I don't think have committed funding.
00:12:43
Speaker
Anyone interested in this topic, I definitely recommend watching the B1M's video on the topic. It runs through the what is an impressive and um amazing project.
00:12:56
Speaker
i can't I look forward to to to going into to Paris to do a little ah jolly and experience it. That's good.
Understanding Construction's Boom and Bust Cycles
00:13:04
Speaker
um The next topic is ah something we talked about like a bunch of times in the past where we keep referencing this idea of like a boom and bust cycle in construction.
00:13:17
Speaker
And it occurred to us um that we hadn't kind of laid out how that you know, is that true and how that cycle comes about? I think it came out of the recent news that Microsoft had been kind of like canceling some of the, not canceling, but like maybe slowing down some of its data center leases, um which a lot of people ah then started like a mild panic that it was kind of like over-invested um in this like data center build out.
00:13:51
Speaker
So that, I guess, in combination with this idea of the boom-boss cycle got us thinking about talking about that cycle, how it originates, what it kind of looks like from inside of the cycle, um and what it kind of does to drive how construction contractors operate, given that's the the world that they live in.
00:14:14
Speaker
So I thought I'd kind of start by laying out the the elements of the cycle and then and then we could use that as a jumping off point to kind of dive in.
00:14:25
Speaker
But I'd say the the probably logical starting point is this idea of like a boom part of the cycle. It can be triggered by a number of things. So it can be triggered by something like low interest rates um or government stimulus or this kind of like opportunity or growth area. Take like a data centers, for example, or historical ones around the world. If you take Australia, there was a ah big kind of China driven resources boom that ah kind of drove this need or capital demand for infrastructure.
00:14:56
Speaker
And so from inside of the industry, you know the characteristics of that are this like big surge in project starts, and that drives like bidding wars between contractors trying to like get a piece of the pie.
00:15:08
Speaker
And that can drive like rapid workforce expansion, It can also result localized rapid changes in workforce where like an area that's being developed suddenly has a massive influx of of people.
00:15:24
Speaker
And then that drives like increased material costs, supply chain bottlenecks and yeah more and more issues in being able to deliver those projects. And then you kind of get to another phase, which is this kind of like peak where, you know, things start overheat.
00:15:40
Speaker
Maybe the low interest rate environment changes, maybe the boom or the demand for the thing that is being built, whether it's resources or data centers gets like a little bit shaky and the investment case on the funding side is less clear.
00:15:56
Speaker
But the thing about the construction in ah industry is if you want a data center or you want a bridge or you want a railway line, and it doesn't happen that you can turn it on immediately. And similarly, it's very, very hard to turn it off immediately. So you kind of get to this peak, maybe the like new investment thesis changes, but you still have this like big backlog of work coming through the pipe.
00:16:19
Speaker
And that then hits this market, which you end up with these characteristics of like labor shortages and then giant like wage spikes. And that cost increase starts to like totally chew away the profit margin. and You end up with these um scenarios of like profitless booms.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, you end up in this spot where um clients might reevaluate completing a project or de-scoping a project. But the contractors are kind of landed with a lot of these costs in the project if they can't pass them on.
00:16:50
Speaker
And then you can hit like the next phase, I guess we'd call it bust, where the funders of the project start like, okay, now I need to save money, reduce costs, start to pay down the debt associated with a bunch of the expenditure during the the the boom.
00:17:05
Speaker
um So you can get things like interest rate hikes or I guess austerity if it was like a government driven thing or just like totally collapsed demand ah if you were talking about like a private um boom.
00:17:20
Speaker
So in like a resources sector or maybe that will happen in the future regarding data centers. And so yeah, you get like project cancellations, project pauses. We've seen a lot of them in different markets around the world ah recently. ah You get construction contractors and starting to like have insolvencies or people can't complete projects.
00:17:42
Speaker
And then you get like a total reversing in the ah numbers of people in an industry, they kind of disperse maybe to other industries. You also get that like localized where you had like a project in a local area where a bunch of people turned up, suddenly like they disappear and you get like, you in local areas, you get like massive, almost like depression kind of states.
00:18:03
Speaker
And then you hit the fourth phase, which is this like recovery where kind of demand normalizes or bottoms out or rates eventually start to get cut and the cycle starts to build up um again. And you kind of basically like, yeah, get on get on the the train again.
00:18:19
Speaker
I probably like that cycle is something felt by like the whole of the economy to
Industry Challenges with Timing and Demand
00:18:24
Speaker
a degree. i think construction, given that it's like at the tail end of the cycle and that its demand swings so wildly um based on the outcome of the cycle, you know, a project that's in delivery could have 2000 people, 5000 people working on it while it's in planning. There's like 100 people or something.
00:18:45
Speaker
it's so cyclical um or leveraged to the cycle and that it's like at the end of it, which means it ends up in the state where there's like a lot of it still happening while the cycle's already turned, just makes it kind of like uniquely cyclical as something that's happened time and time again around the world.
00:19:04
Speaker
So with that bit being said, what's happening with data centers, Carlos? yeah
00:19:11
Speaker
That has some preamble to that question.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's the it's ah it's quite interesting because um most of my career in construction, we didn't really see bust.
Data Center Investments and Market Bubbles
00:19:24
Speaker
And I think being on something like Crossrail, which was most of my career, um that's one of those, let's spend our way through a recession. um So you don't really see it because it was one of the ways that you actually stay out of recession and and stimulate the economy. And we're quite fortunate in that sense.
00:19:40
Speaker
But um just before we go on to data centers, was just thinking through um like but But even that, even that i don't know I don't know if like if you were, i would happen to be talking to one of the central London like biggest recruiters recently in central London construction.
00:19:57
Speaker
And yeah, the boom or bust isn't always the, like everywhere phenomenon. um If you take like a UK example, I would say that there's like a pretty big bust cycle at the moment in central London, project like infrastructure projects. that Yeah, yeah, there's not many.
00:20:17
Speaker
People that wanted that, they just can't find jobs for them. And so, yeah, you ah in a good scenario, you end up with kind of like another demand, whether it's like a nuclear or some other thing that people can reallocate to.
00:20:32
Speaker
But depending on how big the boom is and whether there is something else to move to. So, yeah, definitely yeah isn't a like everything's in boom, everything's in bust. Yeah. It's definitely, i think it'd be really hard to, like if you if you're seeing these flags that a boom cycle is ending or a potential bust is on the horizon, like the natural inclination of any of these organizations is win more work, secure more contracts, because that's the thing that would get you through troughs.
00:20:59
Speaker
So you're kind of almost teeing yourself up for a bigger issue. When you win more, then you lose more contracts because It's really difficult with these huge projects that span over years to sort of ah prepare for a bust to an extent because you can't just start delivering projects slower so you can reduce the for workforce and less the reliance on external factors.
00:21:20
Speaker
So it's it must be really challenging to see it on the horizon and the default stance is we need make more money to protect ourselves against this than Yeah, it can it can lead to even bigger issues. so Yeah, and the like contractor side is like somewhat beholden to like when the clients want to spend the money and do the infrastructure investment.
00:21:39
Speaker
You end up with, like there's the opportunities now, so we need to like invest, invest, invest, and build data centers or whatever it is, and that has like a delay associated with it. But on the client side or the you know the funders of that infrastructure, they they definitely know that there are consequences to that kind of like batching of projects.
00:21:59
Speaker
There are many places around the world I can think of now where, where you know let's say we have customers where we're talking about where projects that have been in the works for 10 years, all of a sudden they're let at the same time.
00:22:11
Speaker
And there's like all these contractors trying to deliver these things in the same locale with the same kind of skillset on top of each other. And it's like, you know, you wouldn't have been better to kind of do one five years ago, one now, but it's like they didn't have money. You're going relocate all of your employees for this project, are you? But yeah, it's like at the time they didn't have the money or the funding cycle or the government, the political environment wasn't right or whatever. And so, yeah, especially from a government spending infrastructure lens, having a longer term view on things that is less politically influenced would surely save a total boatload of money.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, you'd expect. Then like not doing anything, like losing talent to other parts of the world and then all of a sudden trying to do everything at once and paying like overs on everything.
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, I guess to dig into, is this the next boom to bust cycle? Oh yeah, that question. So I guess to give some context, we all know that data centers, this big push at the moment.
00:23:14
Speaker
And in 2024, there was double the amount spent than 2023 in data centers. So a clear, sharp increase in expenditure and projects on the ground.
00:23:25
Speaker
There's over $300 billion planned for 2025. So it's continuing soar. it's it's continuing to soar And obviously in the news we spoke about it the other day, we've got Stargate, we've got France and the UK. They were all sort of entering the AI race and trying to build the infrastructure to be in the game. And then just a few days ago, there was some news that you just mentioned around Microsoft effectively canceling leases and scaling back some of their data center plans.
00:23:53
Speaker
And then you've got things like DeepSeek, which is the AI model that was recently coming out of China, sort of took over the news. um And they've proven that you can do pretty impressive things with a fraction of the investment and the infrastructure around it, along with it everything else in terms of training the model and how quickly they brought it to market. it kind of suggests this massive overheated market, like is this some sort of bubble where there's this race to sort of build arms in the AI space. But then as the technology grows, new technologies emerge and then we get better and more efficient. And then we go back to the making things smaller and and less required from an infrastructure perspective.
00:24:36
Speaker
But you kind of have to go through the journey to be able to understand how to do that. And it's the learnings from going through the process. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I think the dot-com cycle had similar overinvestment um in infrastructure. And um yeah, another example was around telecoms infrastructure. So yeah, um fiber optic networks that actually weren't needed five years later because we did things in quite a largely different way.
00:25:01
Speaker
So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years. But I'm a dummy, right? I look at at it from the contractor's for contract this perspective, which is I can't tell.
00:25:13
Speaker
No contractor can tell the demand. You don't care if you're the contractor, do you? It's work. you care You care, but you can't tell. There's like there's a whole industry of people in the AI world trying to work out what is real, what's the future going to look like.
00:25:29
Speaker
What's demand going to look like? How much inference or or whatever? There's no way that you know ah Joe Bloggs in Contractor A is going to you know just like, dump suck, bang, call it what the demand is going to be.
00:25:40
Speaker
um But you also know for sure that this cycle is like a almost like a repeating factual cycle that happens over time. you have to like strike some balance ah around, you know, hiring, growing. It's really tempting to grow your company to meet the demand and take all of the demand that's like coming your way. you know, you deliver a couple of projects like data centers for a contractor that they like and then, I mean, for a client, then, oh, we've got seven more or whatever.
00:26:10
Speaker
that's in four countries. Can you be in four countries? You know, that sort of thing. um And you kind of have to, You have to do some risk evaluation on like at some point the music stops. there Yeah. What's what's our kind of not exit strategy. What's our what do we do when that when that does happen? Yeah. And a lot of the tech giants, they just have so much cash.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. They don't care. Why wouldn't you just go for it when you can? yeah it's um So it'll be, a yeah, 315 plan for 2025. It'd be good to keep tabs on that does that. Is that spend maintained? If we revisit that conversation in a year, do they actually deliver that? Because that would be an early indicator of, is that demand still there in a relatively short period of time?
00:26:51
Speaker
And jack good to keep track on, obviously. But if you think about like the biggest construction contractors around the world, they might be delivering in the hundreds of millions of profit a year, something like that.
00:27:02
Speaker
The biggest ones. And you then take like one of those technology giants that might be sitting on a, some of them are sitting are on cash piles of 200 or 300 billion. I think 200, 100, 200 billion.
00:27:14
Speaker
It's like there's, they have spare cash cash under the couch equivalent to like a thousand times or, you know, something like that. It's like me yeah you' gettingdding profit bidding a fiver on a horse that's 40 to one because thinks the name's funny.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah, you know you don't give a, you really don't give a, if you overspend by a little bit or not you not, you don't have to live with all the consequences, but these contractors that'll have people everywhere that they've got employment agreements with and, you know, all of that world gets yeah really hard to unwind.
00:27:45
Speaker
And look, it's going to happen to some degree. who know No one knows when, to what scale and and whatever. um You just have to be, you have to think that through, I think, as an industry.
00:27:57
Speaker
Cool, heavy stuff. Let's lighten it up bit. um With a prison. Let's start with a prison.
Manhattan Prison Project: Modernization and Humane Treatment
00:28:08
Speaker
So ah a US-based contractor, Tudor Perrini, is at the helm of a significant new undertaking and project, the construction of a new jail facility in Manhattan.
00:28:20
Speaker
um You've been there, Carlos? I haven't actually, but I reckon a little site visit would be worth it. um The project is a key component of New York City's ambitious plan to shut down the infamous Rikers Island prison complex and replace it with a more modern and, oh, this is a humane borough-based jail system.
00:28:46
Speaker
um The Manhattan facility with a current projected cost of about 3.8 to 4 billion USD will be a state-of-the-art structure designed to house just over a thousand inmates.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's a it's a but it's a beautiful looking building for a jail. um Obviously, one of the questions that come to mind that we talked about off-air co-ops is the idea of like Probably some pretty expensive real estate being used to house prisoners, right?
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah, big time. And I think just to remind everyone, the prison industry in America, 1.2 million people are in prison in America the moment, which is huge percentage of your fee um your population.
00:29:27
Speaker
um They spend a lot of money on prisons and there's this massive private market for prisons out there, which is very lucrative. Yeah, and some context around this place. so It's got a nickname of the tombs, which is a prison built in the early eighteen hundreds It's called the tombs because of the sort of old school Egyptian architectural style with these giant granite blocks of the external structure, ah but also something to do with the actual reputation and treatment of inmates. So it doesn't sound like a very nice place to go.
00:29:57
Speaker
But they're looking to replace it with this modern structure. yeah that Just the idea that you're building something that big, which could be a public building, which is a prison in the middle of Manhattan is pretty wild. The sheer cost of it, you'd think, why would you not just move it outside of one of the main parts of the city of New York?
00:30:13
Speaker
the the like That's obviously where many of them typically are. um It's also interesting that they're like shutting down, or the plan is to shut down Rikers Island, which is famously one of the most dangerous prisons in the US.
00:30:29
Speaker
um It's been all sorts of folks have served time at Rikers, including, fun fact, his a little, i did I did some brief research
Rikers Island's Notorious Inmates and Pop Culture
00:30:40
Speaker
prior.
00:30:40
Speaker
ah The Assassin of John Lennon was housed at Rikers Island, Son of Sam, the serial killer in the 70s, Tupac, Shakur, and who else was good to pull off this list?
00:30:54
Speaker
Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne was at Rikers Island.
00:31:01
Speaker
Uh, not small names. I can't believe we just, yeah. Was that a little, was that a little joke? Um, small names. You come from, uh, yeah. People who assassinate presidents to little way to one sentence. Did you just call little Wayne?
00:31:18
Speaker
That's so British of you. ah But no, I was actually just intrigued as to why you would obviously build the prison in in the area.
00:31:29
Speaker
um And there's a lot of research around um the improvement of rehabilitation rates, opposed to reoffending rates by having prisons in the local area so that people maintain contact with family and everything else that comes with it. So it's sort the thing to live for rather than being shipped off into some horrible very remote location. um That on top of obviously logistically being near courts, legal services, things like that with people going back and forth. It does make a lot of sense, but it's eye water, we go out of money in Manhattan, which is famously high ah rent and everything else that comes with
Local Prison Benefits vs. Real Estate Costs
00:32:04
Speaker
it.
00:32:04
Speaker
Is this very similar to like Mace is building a similar project in near the courts in central London as well, they? That's a bit different because this is kind of a mass ed facility. The one in Salisbury Square in London is where the new high courts will be.
00:32:21
Speaker
It's got some cells, but really for people that are arrested in a temporary cell. Yeah. And then there's also the new headquarters of ah the Met Police Cybercrime Division. So it's a bit more office based rather than um Yeah, 1,400 sort of The escape plan definitely changes drastically based on this new location.
00:32:44
Speaker
um ah Famously, if you watch films of people escaping from Rikers Island, it usually involves some sort of epic swim or boat escape. um Yeah, less sharks. You just chuck a suit on and fade into the street.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:01
Speaker
yeah Yeah, a long grey jacket and a suit and you'll be fine. Yeah. So that what's the project timeline on this? So it's starting this year and it's due to finish in 2032. So if you think about four billion projects over what would be pretty much four years and then commissioning, testing and everything that comes with it, it's quite an aggressive timeline.
00:33:20
Speaker
um So it will be quite a major project in the middle of the city. So um definitely one to keep track of. it And it's one of multiple facilities, I think I read, that they were building. Yeah, they are. There's one in Brooklyn. I think Cudiprini has ordered another $3 billion dollar contract in in Brooklyn. and yeah Yeah.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And good point. Yeah. This is, um, actually a Perini project. so Um, yeah, yeah. so um um Yeah. Interesting. It's hard to work. I think we talked in previous weeks actually about Chudaparini, like stopping bidding work, um, and only selecting projects that they want to tackle.
00:33:55
Speaker
Uh, so one may put two and two together and that they're making a pretty margin on this, uh, Yeah, if you look at the margin on building projects compared to infrastructure, when you get a $4 billion dollar infrastructure building project, you're probably doing okay.
00:34:09
Speaker
QS's dream. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Righto. Well, yeah, super interesting project to watch. I think there was, yeah, all ah both that and the the Paris Metro jobs were but really interesting to dive into.
00:34:22
Speaker
I think that's all we've got time for, mate. Do you want to read us out? Yep. Thank you very much, everyone, for tuning into today's show. If you did enjoy today's episode, please do think about liking the video or following us on your chosen podcast platform.
00:34:34
Speaker
We really do appreciate your support. We'll catch you all next week. Bye-bye. Bye.