Following on from this, I was going to ask on a new thread about infrastructure costs in general.
Why is it I've read many times that the cost of implementing anything, be it tunnels, tracks, stations, singalling etc is so much more expensive now than, say, 30 years ago?
Often in feasability reports (e.g. East-West rail) they say something to the effect of "infrastrucutre costs have grown considerably since last evaulated".
What is increasing? Labour costs? Building standards? Lack of competition meaning rip off fees?
I would have thought costs would decrease seeing the advances in tunneling technology and alike.
In my view there are two constituent answers to that question.
The first is the increasing number of Regulations and "safety" requirements. For example every signal now requires a full work platform under Working at Height Regulations although with the most modern signals there is very little need to access the head these days.
Because of this the signal has to be much more robust.
The signal base has to be even bigger because construction design practices now require that the signal can withstand a once in 100 year Gale Force 10 wind, and the signal has to be treated as is it was a solid structure, just in case a piece of say polythene wraps around it :roll::roll::roll:
Added to that are incremental "factors of safety" (FOS) which are added onto one another, so (say) 100 becomes 100 = FOS 10% = 110, add say 30 = 110 = 30 = 140 + FOS (say) 10% = 140 = 14 = 154. On top of that Designers will round up figurs and put the own factor of safety on top as well.
If you take the latest Construction Design calculations and use them to compare to many of the existing structures you will find that every one will fail. What this means is that signals which have been in existence for years should fall down according to the calculations.
Not one senior S&T Engineer can ever recall a signal falling down of its own accord or being blown over. The signal used to be placed into a 12 inch (350mm) diameter concrete tube, between 6 and 9 feet (2/3m) deep in a hoe that had been dug out and backfilled.
We have never known one to have failed.
In addition the latest Railway Group Standards mandate that any change to a signal structure requires full compliance with the latest Standards. This normally means a complete replacement by a much bigger structure which then affects the Signal Sighting Standards, so the signal has to comply with these and the whole thing gets to be like a series of dominoes each knocking the other one.
The second reason is the projects organisation set up by Network Rail (Investment and Infrastructure) which has become its own massive bureaucracy and is unable to actually manage Projects so it then has to bring in the likes of Bechtel.
I&I have teams who write their own more detailed Standards and requirements which in many cases deliver nothing but give them a form of arse covering.
All these costs mount up and have to be paid before a single Contractor hits the ground. The approach then of course is to criticise the Contractor over price when he not only has to provide extra staff to deal with all the various "requirements" for information and copies of already supplied information, but also has to provide much more detailed documentation and attend presentations, as well supplying (sometimes) unnecessary detail, progress reports, etc, etc..
One final point is that the Contractual games played by NR mean that additional work or price changes to reflect inadequate or increased scopes of work will generally only end up being reimbursed after a long period of Contractual wrangling and then at normally about 40 to 50% of the cost incurred. Contractors thus now have to insure against this when working on NR contracts.
Contractors working in the Railway Industry generally add on abour 5% for profit. All other costs are directly attributable to working for Network Rail.
Other Industries are less demanding and have much higher profit margins 20 to 30% in some cases, without the massive risk that working for NR entails in all sorts of areas. Contractors are now exiting the marker for this reason. AMEC was the first, and Carillion does less business than it did and now only touches Projects work.
Contractors already know that they can get much better returns by investment in stocks and shares compared to working for NR.
All this of course gets overlooked by those who accuse Contractors of being the cause of high proces when in fact actual Contractor costs have been forced down on a year on year basis for several years now.
Track Renewals for example were due to be reduced by 5% per year over a 7 year period. Now that simplistically would have meant that by year 7 the price would only be 65% of year 1.
Take a look at the economics of that and you will realise that this isn't ever going to happen, and Contractors who did go some way to reducing costs found that they lost out after the 7 to 5 exercise forced on existing Contracts part way through (despite assurances this would not happen).
The successful Contractors were told that there would be further 15% reduction required over the remainder of the Contract term, even though prices and costs were / are going up, partly through the much bigger NR I&I organisation but also because of more detailed and stringent NR Standards which only apply to the contractors, not to NR.
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