Poetry in Motion
Building infrastructure and launching books.
Poetry in motion
Walkin' by my side
Her lovely locomotion
Keeps my eyes open wide
Yesterday morning the CEO of the Auckland City Rail Link (CRL), Sean Sweeney, spoke on TVNZ’s Q&A programme about why NZ struggles to build big things.
It’s become accepted in this country that when we do large infrastructure projects they inevitably end up with cost and time overruns. Sometimes there are also scope reductions, where the government of the day decides to remove aspects of a project rather than find more money for another budget blowout.
As an example I live in Te Atatu Peninsula, it’s one road in and one road out, there are no ferries or trains. A few years back a project was undertaken to raise, and expand, the NW Motorway which had a tendency to flood during especially high tides.
The project was intended to deliver train lines along the motorway, so in the future the suburbs to the NW of the city, from Pt Chev, through Te Atatu, Massey, and out to Hobsonville, could take advantage of all the work being done on the CRL to increase it’s capacity and usefulness in getting to different places in the central city.
When the money got tight they simply abandoned the inclusion of rail lines, which will now be much more expensive to retro-fit, should we decide in the future that we need transport solutions beyond motorways. Something that I suspect is not keeping the current Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, awake at night as he dreams of cone free tarmac covering the length and breadth of this country.
On to the interview, with Katie Bradford sitting in for Jack Tame. Sweeney spoke about the fact that initial timelines and costs are just estimates. I found myself nodding, it’s not dissimilar on large software projects. The problem being that until you’ve done a certain amount of analysis and design, perhaps undertaken investigation into areas of uncertainty, you simply cannot cost things accurately.
Needless to say this is not music to the ears of a customer who wants to know how much it’s going to cost them and when they’re going to get it. So you’re left with three options:
Cost things based on the worst case assumptions. If you have to avoid surprises with a fixed price you’re going to need plenty of contingency to cover unknowns. The good thing about this approach is there are no budget surprises, the downside is you’ll never win the work because someone else will undersell you.
Be very specific about what is excluded and what your assumptions are, and if the ones you choose in order to achieve a small, saleable, cost turn out to be unrealistic then you ask for more money. Hello time and cost overruns.
Be honest about what you know and what you don’t. Some organisations use a model of “progressive commitment” where up front work is done at a fixed price to the point where a meaningful budget and schedule can be assessed.
Option #3 prevents either the supplier or the customer taking a bath financially but it requires trust and that’s difficult to achieve when you have alternate suppliers, or alternate customers - in the form of the political opposition, sniping away saying it should’ve been cheaper or quicker, or at least more inline with the original estimates.
Sean spoke about the pressure to get numbers down on incredibly complex projects. I can well believe it, the projects I managed were an order of magnitude smaller but I’m familiar with technical people making their best efforts to cost a project only to be told that the number is too big to win the job and make it smaller. The pressure to make a sale prevents parties from being upfront about how uncertain things are.
Katie spoke of the old adage time, cost, quality - pick one. Which is not as I know that equation, the third variable is supposed to be scope, and quality is generally regarded as being non-negotiable - even though it’s often the thing that is sacrificed. At least in software, hopefully not so much in rail tunnels.
Sean was very clear that quality was the focus, along the lines of another old adage that quality is remembered long after price is forgotten. He also spoke of events that have impacted the project, and it’s all valid stuff - no vendor would build in contingency to cover the possibility of a global pandemic. Sometimes things change that are beyond anyone’s control, or ability to predict.
Katie asked about doing larger programmes of work and Sean, carefully choosing his words, said it was his perception that we’ve lost the desire to do programmes of major public infrastructure. That as we moved from the Think Big days of Muldoon to the private sector we simply stopped undertaking large public works.
In Sean’s view the country needs to decide what sort of infrastructure we want to take us forward. He said that infrastructure is a fundamental underpinning of the health and wealth of a nation, and that we need to have that conversation as a country and not just do projects as a series of one offs.
Not only will such ad hoc projects not deliver the future we might want, but they cost more to deliver due to one-off start-up and shut-down costs. Beyond that, because the industry lacks the pipeline of work coming through it means we lose the capability to do these works as talented people go overseas where there is demand.
Katie moved to politics, discussing how politicised things are and that changes in government can impact these projects. She asked Sean if he had a solution to that. He talked of other countries, like Ireland, having a long term strategy which all the political parties sign up to.
Sweeney said, “if we are to take the cost out of projects going forward in NZ we have to do it differently to how we’re doing it and that will enable NZ to build more for the people of NZ. Now, that will require an approach that we don’t have at the moment and that will require a commitment and a disciple to building in a certain way and an agreed list of projects. It’s all doable but political parties would then give up absolute freedom to pursue their agenda and that’s going to be the rub - what’s the issue of greater good here?”
I agree, there are things politicians should be involved in and others that should not be used as political footballs. Cancer drugs should never be part of political debate, law and order to a large extent should be de-politicised, and as Sean says if we want great public works, like we used to build, we can’t have parties sniping and creating uncertainty for political purposes.
For many of these things, be it a linked up rail network fit for the 21st century, how many police we fund, whether we build a new hospital, or which cancer drugs we fund, we’d get more for our money if we weren’t paying the costs of this squabbling and point scoring. Not to mention the wasteful spending where large projects, like light rail to the airport, are abandoned. That doesn’t benefit anyone.
If you’d like to watch the full interview it’s below, I found the part on Private/Public Partnerships especially interesting in light of where this government is going.
In the interests of disclosure, because it annoys me when other people don’t do it, I have a connection with Sean.
You might recall a recent newsletter about my son Alex in Melbourne getting engaged to his long time partner Eleanor, and how delighted we were. Well Sean is Eleanor’s dad, although I’ve only met him the once, at a book launch five years ago for one of my Dad’s poetry collections.
Which is also where I was yesterday, over in Devonport for his latest book launch. A few photos below from that:
It was lovely to see family and old friends. Ian Mune gave an intro on the difference between prose and poetry, demonstrated by reading a couple of Dad’s poems in the different styles. As ever it was enchanting to listen to his oration, he told us even a shopping list could be poetry and with that delivery I believed him.
Up next publisher Roger Steele with tales to tell, including recognising the amazing support that my mother gives Dad, as she scurried around making sure there were enough seats and we enjoyed the fabulous food provided by friends and others sampled the fine wines.
Dad delivered his poems superbly, many in the audience, as Mr Mune noted, listening intently with eyes closed so as not to be distracted by messages from our eyes. Each one announced in a no-nonsense Prussian fashion that the mighty Syd, Dad’s father, would have approved of.
I felt tremendously proud of my family, not least the kids and their cousins who were there in support of Dad/Grandpa, even if poetry is not their cup of tea.
It was fabulous to see our closest family friends the Hoskins. Here is a shot of Maureen and I, you might recognise her name from the comments section as a fellow reader of this newsletter, she’s also known me longer than anyone outside of my family.
This last week it was two years since we lost Maureen’s husband, Andrew. A small number of you might remember a newsletter I wrote at the time, which you can read here if you’d like. It’s a favourite one of mine.
The world got smaller.
I got the news on Monday night, my Mother called and in that precise tone she uses when she has to deliver awful news told me she had to let me know that Andrew had died that morning.
So there we are, not a lot of politics today, but friends, family, poetry, and some sensible thoughts about building things for the future. Things to enjoy and celebrate. Hope you have a lovely day on this cold bleak Monday.
Looks like Facebook are back to their old tricks removing posts. If you click on the option to challenge it they don't take long to re-instate posts but it's a bloody pain in the butt having to do so as Facebook discourages people from stepping outside of it's walls.
We loved that interview with Sean Sweeney. Politicians who have never built a thing need to reflect on their priorities, Potholes and 4 lane motorways for example. Also loved hearing about your Dad : will be sure to look further. John and I were reflecting this morning that engineering and construction are very creative ; Building a bridge for example ; how marvellous is that! Thank goodness the CRL has gotten so far it can't be cancelled by Simeon.