Posts by Neil
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Speaker: The crisis is all around us,…, in reply to John Farrell,
One can trace things back to the Bolger govt’s deregulating but that doesn’t explain why so many involved in the construction industry and in councils acted deceitfully and incompetently.
We prided our selves on our ingenuity, number 8 wire etc, but that’s proved to be a thing of the past. I’m astonished that that has happened and can’t quite work out why.
Maybe it’s just a myth we had about ourselves like the myth the Ozzie’s had about being good sports.
But we have deal with now and I’m not convinced that’s going to happen.
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In-coming governments must get given by the Manderins some ancient dogeared tome of wisdom with the first three commandments being:
1. Don’t sack hopeless ministers no matter how much damage they cause
2. Equivocate over the meanings of “tax” and “new”
3. Blame everything on the previous government.
We never get to see 4, 5, 6 etc which could explain why on the surface this seems bad advice.
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The delay in remediation of the Middlemore buildings may turn out to be somewhat of a blessing in disguise.
What south Auckland needs is a completely new hospital to meet demand and remediation carries large risk.
Remediation always winds up costing far more than planned and it doesn’t always achieve the desired result. Anticipated costs are often kept artificially low and usually once a building is opened up new problems come to light. Some apartment buildings have gone through a number of remediation cycles because of the failure of previous attempts.
It may turn out to be better to spend the minimum necessary to keep the buildings safely limping along and put the remediation budget into a new fascility.
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Hard News: The Unitec project: Something…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’m not blaming Twyford for the situation at Middlemore, I’m arguing that there was information available that should have raised alarm bells on the broader problem building issue.
As I’ve said, that was also largely ignored by the National govt.
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Hard News: The Unitec project: Something…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’ll email you.
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Hard News: The Unitec project: Something…, in reply to Sacha,
Yes I did misread that but that doesn’t change the point that the DHB from very early on actively ignored their building problems and that would have involved their consultant engineers. Or worse - they didn’t consult.
It’s a pattern repeated in the private sector as the other article I linked to suggests.
It’s been no secret for quite sometime that many govt buildings have problems. People like that maitanence person have been trying to point out the magnitude of the problem but have been ignored.
I know the problem building issue was raised with both Twyford and Kaye. Kaye could not convince the then National govt to take this seriously - although she did get some important changes to laws governing how body corporates operate, Twyford paid little attention.
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The Middlemore Hospital maintanence person who tried to alert the DHB to problems early on mentions being overruled by “experts”. That would have been consultant engineers. One wonders how many other buildings they were called on to assess and said – nothing to see here.
Another big problem was the confidential settlement process. It meant the true extent of the problem was kept from the public and those who owned similar buildings weren’t given any warning of this. Certainly the construction companies like Hawkins weren’t going to go out of their way to inform anyone that they built similar building all over the place.
Similarly with councils and the property management companies who often effectively ran Body Corps. They knew and kept silent. One consequence being finding out after the cut off period for legal action. Not a coincidence.
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Questions remain over just who knew what and when about the hospital's litany of building woes, and what was done about it.
The board said it became aware it had four badly leaking buildings between 2012 and 2013.
However, a hospital maintenance worker, who RNZ has agreed not to name, said that warnings went to the board three years before that.
Mr Simpson said he was confronted at the start, in early 2008, with a mental health unit leaking so badly it had had to be demolished.
From 2013 until he left, he said he found his position was "severely" curtailed and building decisions were made without him because he had disagreed over some matters.
"Where you bypass your experts ... I think it's atrocious," he said.
Lots of people in authority turned a blind eye to this over a few decades. Problems were known - but no one thought to check - properly check - all the buildings built during the period when known problem buildings were built. (Even more tragically it’s a myth that this was confined to one short period of time).
This could also undermine efforts to intensify in Auckland:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12021047
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Hard News: The Unitec project: Something…, in reply to Sacha,
I would suggest contacting John Gray at HOBANZ.
His group has been trying for a number of years to put this issue on the radar of both National and Labour but with minimal success.
The current Minister for Building and Construction recently denied there were any leaky buildings at a meeting of govt and industry representatives. She has no background in this area which is a slight impediment.
There were people trying to get the message through but both National and Labour did not want to hear.
Leaky buildings (a misnomer - it’s not necessarily the leaky which is problematic) are still being built and councils are still singing off on them. Unless Labour does something about how the building industry works there’s just going to more pain for more people.
Twyford was talking about going into partnership with Fletchers. That should ring alarm bells.
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The Auckland Council looking for a new HQ bought a leaky building. Worth pondering for a moment. If they can’t ascertain the quality of a building then who can. They signed off on that building.
No one did an inventory of buildings that could be problematic. Everyone just wanted the problem to go away. So buildings of that era were never checked. Never checked – even though those in the know knew there were going to problems.
So, if I were a member of an incoming govt and had been given information about the real extent of the problem I would have gone looking for those problems building. And they’re not hard to spot.