There are some new traffic lights being fitted to a local major roundabout. The costs are, according to the local council spokesman, about five million pounds, and will take a couple of months.
It's easy to get silly and say good grief, it's a dozen lightbulbs on sticks, but seriously - WHY do roadworks cost so much?
Wages? Five million would buy a heck of a lot of staff for eight weeks.
Machinery? How much IS a JCB? How many would 5 million buy? Would you buy fifty and throw them away after eight weeks?
Materials? Tarmac isn't liquid gold. I know traffic lights are computer controlled of course - so that's fifteen quid worth of chips made in China and some light bulbs then.
Profit margins? Is some private company making four point nine million pounds of public money on this project?
All those will contribute but to add up to five million!?
I just can't see where it gets spent. I'm not looking for "it's all those faceless bureaucrats drawing a salary" type answer - I genuinely wonder if anyone knows where the bulk of money goes on roadworks projects?
It's no use asking the council. They just say "contractor's costs" or some such and you have no more idea.
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Public Awarenesss, rerouting of traffic, surveying of other services in the road, road markings, light sequencing (this is a remarkably specialised career - a coursemate is going into traffic planning direct from a Civil Engineering masters and it's not a low paid role). Those are the bits that occur immediately anyway...
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Dipstick .... that sounds like the Thickthorn roundabout A11/A47 at Norwich. No idea how the council can under-estimate by so much (if this was the private sector someone would be out of a job) but you must admit that the lights have improved the traffic flow.
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IanS
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Nope - not the Norwich ones. A10 roundabout at Cambridge. Job is in progress.
I don't have an axe to grind here particularly - I'm genuinely interested in getting an idea of how it costs that much money.
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It certainly doesn't end up as clear profit for the contractors - most contractors have an absolutely tiny profit margin.
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It certainly doesn't end up as clear profit for the contractors - most contractors have an absolutely tiny profit margin.
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lol
But that is exactly where our taxpayers money does go isn't it?
This type of work is always done by private contractors nowadays. It seems that the works are always charged high and always take longer than they say. Private sector efficiencies? There's not much evidence.
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This type of work is always done by private contractors nowadays. It seems that the works are always charged high and always take longer than they say. Private sector efficiencies? There's not much evidence.
This type of work is also frequently tendered competitively i.e. the lowest price wins. So the price charged is the market rate.
Price fixing does occasionally happen (proving it is another thing!), but only to save contractors spending time and money preparing a tender (a £4 million job could cost a contractor £20,000 to prepare). If prices were fixed and prices inflated, it would soon be spotted by the client team, as they will have done a budget.
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This type of work is also frequently tendered competitively i.e. the lowest price wins. So the price charged is the market rate.
Such faith. You obviously didn't watch that TV documentary (C4?)last year about cartels in the construction industry.....
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Such faith. You obviously didn't watch that TV documentary (C4?)last year about cartels in the construction industry.....
I didn't see that programme.
I've passively experienced cartels (i can't see that i've been involved with!) three times in 14 years from both sides. Maybe some of the material prices are fixed (and perhaps that's what you mean), but a contractor couldn't fix the price and get away with it. Because on one of the above occasions, they were caught red handed, and lost a chunk of business as a result.
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Price fixing does occasionally happen (proving it is another thing!), but only to save contractors spending time and money preparing a tender (a £4 million job could cost a contractor £20,000 to prepare). If prices were fixed and prices inflated, it would soon be spotted by the client team, as they will have done a budget.
£20,000 is very conservative when bidding for business of this type. Any government contract even for relatively simple stuff buries you under a mountain of commercial TS&C's which all have to be responded to and negotiated etc, which ties up much manpower.
Personally, I think if you are doing anything other than soft-skills work such as consultancy, it is hard to make much profit on these deals now.
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This type of work is always done by private contractors nowadays. It seems that the works are always charged high and always take longer than they say. Private sector efficiencies? There's not much evidence.
Sorry to reply twice, but i also meant to say that these sort of works are the most unpredictable being that the existing condition of the ground is unknown unless you have x ray vision!
Problems encountered in working in the ground include:
1 - that pipe / cable shouldn't be there!
2 - what is that pipe / cable?
3 - On no, it's an asbestos pipe!
4 - Where's that water coming from?
5 - What's that petrol smell?
6 - Is this amulet early or late Bronze Age?
etc etc
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£5 million does sound a lot - is that figure just for that particular roundabout or a series of them. A NEW roundabout (without lights) would be £500-750k, whereas councils often opt for traffic lights because they cost c.£100k to introduce to a junction.
BTW, a JCB is about £250 a day with operator, and tarmac caqn be £35-50/m2, depending on the ground and use. Plus you need to allow for kerbs, drainage, signage, re-routing underground services, footpaths(?), new streetlighting (?), landscaping (?) and whitelining.
In terms of staff, there's obivously the labour, but there will be a site manager, QS, buyer and foreman, not to mention the engineer and also an engineer from the highways authority.
As for profit: on a £4 million building scheme, a contractor will charge 6.5% Overheads and Profit. Of that, 5% will be overheads and 1.5% profit. It might not sound much, but it's a substantial figure when you realise that the capital employed is a fraction of the overall cost. I've no reason to think that civils will enjoy higher OHP, but i could be wrong.
It's very hard to comment usefully without knowing the roundabout or the costs. i can't think for one minute that the money is being spent on anything other than the works, as public bodies are audited. So the only thing that i can think of is that the £5million relates to a wider scope of works i.e. other locations.
Can you provide a link to a webpage with the works mentioned? It may be possible for you to get a breakdown of the contractor costs under Freedom of Information, especially as it's public works. They will have had to fill in a Contract Sum Analysis or a rarity these days a Bill of Quantities. I'd be interested to see it too, for research.
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I work in the public sector, and most of the costs go on 'back end' junkets, meetings, consultants, and general corruption.
For example toploading of the cost of work, in return for 'gifts', and even the three companies that work goes out to tender are all in it together with unofficial agreement of the begifted officials. This country is sooo corrupt, but they are the best at hiding it.
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Thanks to all. This is actually a very interesting subject to me, so I'm grateful for your input. To respond to some points:
Thanks HJ for the book title. I'll be interested to find a copy.
cjehuk - public awareness to me means some posters and a bit of media attention. There is no rerouting. Surveying of services to me means checking some plans, or at the outside, a man with a sophisticated metal detector looking for pipes for a day. Road markings is some paint. Light sequencing I appreciate is tricky, but five million would pay for a career, not one project. Not being difficult, just can't see how that all adds up to that much money.
As to the profit margins being small - thanks peterb - if as mare says it might only be 1.5% that's in the order of 75k profit on this project to the contractor. Interesting.
Fimally, mare again, thanks for those numbers. JCBs are cheaper than I thought they might be (enough money to employ one machine every day for five years then, to be facetious) and tarmac more expensive.
There's a news website about it at this link. Now, before I go any further, let me point out that web page is ambiguous. You could easily read it as saying the junction improvements PLUS the lights are five and a half million, which is a different scenario to the one I asked about. In fact the spokesman on the radio last week was clearly saying the lights are five million over and above the junction improvements. So I need to check that situation out, and my figures, before going much further. I'll do that, as the two things are very clearly different.
The web page is here:
tinyurl.com/jos2n
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A NEW roundabout (without lights) would be £500-750k,>>
A straightforward roundabout (no lights) built about seven or eight years ago near where I live (it's about 30 yards across) cost £1m.
Around two years ago a new suspension bridge was built over an artificial lake (the work covered about 150 yards all in with road works) and cost what many felt was a very expensive £6m (a straightforward road bridge would have be quite sufficient).
Yet in relation to the roundabout mentioned, the £6m almost seems a bargain...:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Maybe I've mentioned before that on the A14 near the Girton turnoff a layby was built a year or two ago. A layby. Six hundred and seventy five thousand pounds.
The joy is that when it was finished it was deemed unsafe to use, as there was no run off from it into the traffic. Too steep an angle back onto the dual carriageway. Suspiciously, it seems to have a lovely long shallow access INTO it. I've often wondered whether it was built back to front, actually.
So it was closed immediately. Never been used to this day. It bears a no entry sign.
I have no idea whether anyone lost their job, or whether tax payers received a refund from the contractors.
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Having just realised what you're talking about, just calling it a "roundabout" is rather misleading. I was envisaging some little pile of bricks that cars go around.
It's a major dual-carriageway junction - the same design as a typical motorway junction. Currently a 2-lane roundabout built above the dual carriageway, with 5 exits (2 onto the A14, 1 minor, and 2 major).
It's basically being expanded from 2 lanes to 3 - a pretty major piece of work, as it's all elevated. The A10 approach is also being dualled, and another separate feeder onto the A14 is being built. It's a very busy junction - one of the main commuter entry points into Cambridge - and the work is taking months, as it can't be closed. It started in August, and is still going.
I'm not an auditor, but my initial impression is that £5 million doesn't seem remotely unreasonable for something of this scale.
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All appreciated - but the gist of the thing, as I mentioned earlier, is that my understanding is that the five and a half million is just for the lights, over and above the other improvements. Certainly that's what was being reported on the media last week. As I also mentioend, I'm going to try and clarify that in case I'm wrong.
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"Neuro Diversity and Conflict Management Seminar"
this is the latest moneypit.
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It's no use asking the council. They just say "contractor's costs" or some such and you have no more idea.
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you have a right to get the fullest reply from your council:
www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/foi/
"Cambridgeshire County Council already makes a large amount of information available to its citizens in an open and friendly way. Information can be obtained through its website, leaflets and many other publications. The Council wants Cambridgeshire's residents to have access to all the information they need in order that they can become involved in the Council's work.
Under the new Freedom of Information Act, .... "
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About 20 years ago when the M20 was linked to the south side of the M25 via the M26, there was no access from the east from Sevenoaks. This was done to save £110,000. It would probably cost £10-15 million to add it now. For anyone living in Sevenoaks and wanting to join the motorway going east involves a 10 mile route by to A25 through many other villages, despite the motorway running cloes to the town centre.
When motorways were first built, the hardshoulders were intended for occassional use and built accordingly. When the motorways needed resurfacing after about 20 years, the traffic volume was now so great that the hardshoulders had to be rebuilt to allow their use as a carriageway.
When the Medway Tunnel was connected to a new road accessing a large industrial estate, no allowance had been made for the roundabout in the original plans for the estate. The comment made was that the final position had not yet been agreed at a public enquiry. This public enquiry, at a huge cost, delayed the whole project by about 8 years and hence cost even more than initially planned.
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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I remember a couple of years ago there were major roadworks on M8 at Junction 6 Newhouse. Loads of publicity in newspaper and local radio about the selays, all the trafic would be channelled along the hard shoulder.
Exactly 2 hours after the diversion started, it was stopped as the hard shoulder collapsed with the weight of all the traffic! No one had bothered to check that it could carry the traffic!
On a similar note, on the opposite side of the carriageway, they have been trialling these flashing red cats eyes things. There is a sign up announcing the trial with the year (2004) beside it. The lights seem to flash at random but there are no signs up saying what the flashing lights mean! No idea how much that lot cost!
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My theory is about the disappearing millions of public money is that it goes out to private consultancy firms. It seems that vast amounts of public money get spent on paying outside organisations to evaluate situations and advise on decisions that professional council staff are qualified, trained and employed to handle.
Not a few of these consultants were themselves formerly high-flying local authority professionals who, having risen near to the top of the ladder by their mid to late 30's, made the seamless leap into the lucrative 'local government support' sector.
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Of course it does. How do you think civil servants, local government officials and councillors supplement their meagre official incomes. HJ
Another shot at anyone in the public sector. Gets a bit boring after a while.
I think councillors get expenses only, don't they? (apart from huge bribes from construction industry...).
If these jobs are so good then how come we don't all want one? Mate of mine is a (private sector) accountant and reckons there are something like 5000+ accountancy jobs vacant across the public sector but they can't fill them because pay and perks are poor. Another thing I heard is that much local authority planning (building and highways) is now done by freelancers because local authorities no longer want to take them on as employees - they just bring them in as and when needed.
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