If this is such a huge inconvenience, what is stopping the faculty from staying in their Frome Road premises until the hospital relocates?Patrick_27 wrote: That the University students needing access to the RAH will have to trek back to the other side of the city for at-least a couple of months (likely to be longer) and there is not even a tram (yet) to make this journey easier.
[COM] Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
It would be embarrassing for Adelaide uni and the state government if the medical school didn't move into theMants wrote:If this is such a huge inconvenience, what is stopping the faculty from staying in their Frome Road premises until the hospital relocates?Patrick_27 wrote: That the University students needing access to the RAH will have to trek back to the other side of the city for at-least a couple of months (likely to be longer) and there is not even a tram (yet) to make this journey easier.
new building early next year.
You can imagine the headlines : 'Adelaide Uni spends $246 million of taxpayer's money on a vacant building !!'
The Advertiser would have a field day with headlines like that lol.
NRah is becoming a nightmare for the state government. Obviously the SA government needs to minimise the
negative media reports.
It would probably be better to open the new building and make the staff and students commute.
Just goes to show how important it was to get the scheduling of NRah correct in the first place.
This whole situation is an absolute disgrace.
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how good is he
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[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
Its not clear if you are but you can't blame the Govt (or Adel Uni) if this turns out to be the case. For the NRah it's up to the builder/developer to deliver the finished product as per the spec's and every days delay actually saves (makes) the Govt (and us as taxpayers) $1m per day ! (which adds money to the budget so they can spend it on other things). That's why they are probably saying, take as long as you like to get it right...
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
1) The state government contracted the NRah work out to a consortium - Hansen yuncken, Leighton, etc. If these
companies can't get the work done on schedule, then the state government shouldn't have contracted the work
out to them. To say that the delays are the fault of the contractors is just an excuse. The state government are
ultimately responsible.
2) If the builders were paying for $1 million per day since the middle of this year then they would have gone
broke by now. The state government is paying for the delays at the expense of the taxpayer.
companies can't get the work done on schedule, then the state government shouldn't have contracted the work
out to them. To say that the delays are the fault of the contractors is just an excuse. The state government are
ultimately responsible.
2) If the builders were paying for $1 million per day since the middle of this year then they would have gone
broke by now. The state government is paying for the delays at the expense of the taxpayer.
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how good is he
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[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
Response to 1) how the hell was the state govt to know the builders/developers wouldn't meet their own work schedule for completion and build it with "9 key defects .... now deemed unfixable." These are reputable building companies involved and assume they would have had the best people and experience to know what they are doing. I still don't understand your logic how the Govt. can be responsible, they aren't the ones on the tools building it. 2) Yes it's approx $1m the govt is saving every day that the builder/developer is late with handover. So far they estimate govt will save $400m (ie 400 days late).
From the AFR
■ A $1.85 billion fixed-price contract to design and build the hospital;
■ An annual service payment averaging $397 million in nominal terms over the 30-year contract. (These payments were contracted to start in 2016; but haven't and won't under the hospital is handed over).
■ The hospital will revert to state ownership in 2046
From the AFR
■ A $1.85 billion fixed-price contract to design and build the hospital;
■ An annual service payment averaging $397 million in nominal terms over the 30-year contract. (These payments were contracted to start in 2016; but haven't and won't under the hospital is handed over).
■ The hospital will revert to state ownership in 2046
Last edited by how good is he on Tue Dec 20, 2016 5:05 am, edited 3 times in total.
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how good is he
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[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
From The Australian 16 Sept
Defects and delays keep Royal Adelaide Hospital on critical list
Dark clouds hang over Royal Adelaide Hospital and its long-delayed opening. Picture: Tait Schmaal
REBECCA PUDDY
The Australian12:00AM September 16, 2016
Today the doors of the nation’s most expensive building, the imposing 10-storey Royal Adelaide Hospital, standing tall on the banks of the River Torrens, should swing open to receive patients.
The $2.3 billion facility, which has earnt the accolade of the world’s third most expensive building (after New York’s One World Trade Centre and Bucharest’s Palace of the Parliament), is set to be Australia’s first paperless hospital delivering state-of-the-art healthcare, with private rooms and lush gardens.
But in reality, the site remains a 24-hour building site, a mecca for workers in hard hats and high-vis vests. Delays and mistakes in the building of the nation’s most advanced hospital have continually pushed back deadlines, prompting a bitter legal battle between the state government and its builders.
Today is meant to be another milestone for the 800-bed facility, the day the keys are to be handed to the state Labor government, after the initial January deadline was extended.
Instead, construction conglomerate Hansen Yuncken Leighton Contractors and the operators of the hospital, SA Health Partnership, are in court arguing with the government over the many defects that cannot be fixed. Now, the promise is that the works will be completed by March.
The disaster is labelled a “vanity project” and its stuff ups “the stuff of comedy”, and that is just the Australian Medical Association’s assessment.
The defects and the delays come on top of a looming safety crisis, amid concerns that the electronic patient record system for the paperless hospital will not be ready. With ward floors not strong enough to withstand the weight of paper records, the government is still to reveal its plans to store them off-site.
Of the key defects, The Australian can reveal that nine are deemed unfixable. They include room sizes, ceiling heights, ventilation for a nuclear medicine laboratory, room temperature, fresh air control and poorly laid floor vinyl. The builder contends that the alleged defects pose no or limited loss in functionality.
They are on top of additional costs caused by unexpected contamination of a section once part of Adelaide’s railyards, the failure of the building’s condenser water system and the replacement of fixtures following internal flooding.
Health Minister Jack Snelling says there is no date for when the new hospital will open.
“As we have said before, no decisions will be made about the timing of the hospital move until we have confidence that the timelines provided to us are realistic and reliable,” Snelling says. “The state government will not pay one cent in service payments until commercial acceptance has been achieved.”
Since the building was commissioned in 2011, its construction costs alone have nearly doubled, from $244.7 million to more than $417m.
For its part, the construction consortium blames the state government for the delays, accusing it of failing to meet time frames and modifying project requirements.
The builder has unsuccessfully sought more than $500m in compensation for the delays.
The finger-pointing in South Australia follows similar experiences in Western Australia, where the builders of the $2bn 783-bed Fiona Stanley Hospital abandoned plans to develop the state’s first paperless hospital, which opened in late 2014 nearly a year behind schedule. A post-build review found the ambition to create a paperless hospital went “a step too far” and time frames were optimistic. Hospital contractor Serco was paid $118.8m to provide services to a hospital that was empty for the first six months and then substantially under-utilised for another half year.
Commercially sensitive documents obtained by The Australian show similar problems are arising in South Australia with staff employed by hospital contractor Spotless. One proposal includes putting staff to work in the new Royal Adelaide Hospital kitchens and then transporting the meals across the city to the present hospital.
Now the $1.2bn Perth Children’s Hospital is under the microscope, with WA Auditor General Colin Murphy investigating its building contracts. That build is at least one year behind schedule and asbestos was found in roof panels imported from China.
AMA president Michael Gannon says the lessons learned in WA and SA should be considered a cautionary tale for other states looking to replace their ageing health infrastructure. “Other state and territory governments will need to be very careful and constrain their ambitions on these vanity projects,” he says. “There have been basic design mistakes in all of these hospital builds.”
The Royal Adelaide Hospital’s inability to hold paper records “would be the stuff of comedy if it wasn’t true”, he says.
In 2014, the nation’s top hospital chief executives met in Melbourne to discuss the massive disconnect between the aspirations for new hospitals and what was actually delivered, identifying the rapid move towards digital hospitals and new IT systems as key risks.
SA opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade describes the Royal Adelaide Hospital build as a “rolling disaster”.
“It is already seven months behind schedule and $640m over budget,” he says. “The hospital is an impressive health asset but I have deep concerns that Labor is unable to deliver quality healthcare. Their poorly thought out plans for outpatients, electronic patient records, clinical research and a reduction in cardiac beds are just the tip of the iceberg of an unfolding health disaster.”
Last month, Minister Snelling, barely concealing his anger, said the government had lost patience with the builders and had no confidence in their deadlines. In a show of brinkmanship, he said a dispute with the builders over fixing defects would be hashed out in the state’s Supreme Court.
“The position they’ve been trying to arrive at is one where we accept the hospital and start moving patients in and, most importantly, start paying for a hospital, and some of the defects we leave to be fixed up after we’ve moved in. Now that’s just not acceptable,” he told reporters.
“We’re sick of being mucked around by the consortium. We want to send an unambiguous message to SAHP that we will not be accepting a hospital that’s anything other than first best.”
For Premier Jay Weatherill’s government, further delay to the hospital opening affects Labor’s positioning before the 2018 election, with pundits predicting a close result.
Next June is now the earliest the government can start moving patients — peak flu season. Both the nurses’ union and public hospital doctors’ association say they will oppose an attempt to shift hospitals in winter, when demand for hospital services is at its highest.
Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation state president Elizabeth Dabars says it will be “particularly dangerous” to move hospitals in winter. “We would be opposing that. Fundamentally in order to make a safe transition you need to have the best possible scenario,” Dabars says. “On its face, it is the most inappropriate time of the year.”
The government and SAHP return to the Supreme Court next Friday in an attempt to negotiate a way for the government to accept the hospital defects, especially those that cannot be fixed.
Defects and delays keep Royal Adelaide Hospital on critical list
Dark clouds hang over Royal Adelaide Hospital and its long-delayed opening. Picture: Tait Schmaal
REBECCA PUDDY
The Australian12:00AM September 16, 2016
Today the doors of the nation’s most expensive building, the imposing 10-storey Royal Adelaide Hospital, standing tall on the banks of the River Torrens, should swing open to receive patients.
The $2.3 billion facility, which has earnt the accolade of the world’s third most expensive building (after New York’s One World Trade Centre and Bucharest’s Palace of the Parliament), is set to be Australia’s first paperless hospital delivering state-of-the-art healthcare, with private rooms and lush gardens.
But in reality, the site remains a 24-hour building site, a mecca for workers in hard hats and high-vis vests. Delays and mistakes in the building of the nation’s most advanced hospital have continually pushed back deadlines, prompting a bitter legal battle between the state government and its builders.
Today is meant to be another milestone for the 800-bed facility, the day the keys are to be handed to the state Labor government, after the initial January deadline was extended.
Instead, construction conglomerate Hansen Yuncken Leighton Contractors and the operators of the hospital, SA Health Partnership, are in court arguing with the government over the many defects that cannot be fixed. Now, the promise is that the works will be completed by March.
The disaster is labelled a “vanity project” and its stuff ups “the stuff of comedy”, and that is just the Australian Medical Association’s assessment.
The defects and the delays come on top of a looming safety crisis, amid concerns that the electronic patient record system for the paperless hospital will not be ready. With ward floors not strong enough to withstand the weight of paper records, the government is still to reveal its plans to store them off-site.
Of the key defects, The Australian can reveal that nine are deemed unfixable. They include room sizes, ceiling heights, ventilation for a nuclear medicine laboratory, room temperature, fresh air control and poorly laid floor vinyl. The builder contends that the alleged defects pose no or limited loss in functionality.
They are on top of additional costs caused by unexpected contamination of a section once part of Adelaide’s railyards, the failure of the building’s condenser water system and the replacement of fixtures following internal flooding.
Health Minister Jack Snelling says there is no date for when the new hospital will open.
“As we have said before, no decisions will be made about the timing of the hospital move until we have confidence that the timelines provided to us are realistic and reliable,” Snelling says. “The state government will not pay one cent in service payments until commercial acceptance has been achieved.”
Since the building was commissioned in 2011, its construction costs alone have nearly doubled, from $244.7 million to more than $417m.
For its part, the construction consortium blames the state government for the delays, accusing it of failing to meet time frames and modifying project requirements.
The builder has unsuccessfully sought more than $500m in compensation for the delays.
The finger-pointing in South Australia follows similar experiences in Western Australia, where the builders of the $2bn 783-bed Fiona Stanley Hospital abandoned plans to develop the state’s first paperless hospital, which opened in late 2014 nearly a year behind schedule. A post-build review found the ambition to create a paperless hospital went “a step too far” and time frames were optimistic. Hospital contractor Serco was paid $118.8m to provide services to a hospital that was empty for the first six months and then substantially under-utilised for another half year.
Commercially sensitive documents obtained by The Australian show similar problems are arising in South Australia with staff employed by hospital contractor Spotless. One proposal includes putting staff to work in the new Royal Adelaide Hospital kitchens and then transporting the meals across the city to the present hospital.
Now the $1.2bn Perth Children’s Hospital is under the microscope, with WA Auditor General Colin Murphy investigating its building contracts. That build is at least one year behind schedule and asbestos was found in roof panels imported from China.
AMA president Michael Gannon says the lessons learned in WA and SA should be considered a cautionary tale for other states looking to replace their ageing health infrastructure. “Other state and territory governments will need to be very careful and constrain their ambitions on these vanity projects,” he says. “There have been basic design mistakes in all of these hospital builds.”
The Royal Adelaide Hospital’s inability to hold paper records “would be the stuff of comedy if it wasn’t true”, he says.
In 2014, the nation’s top hospital chief executives met in Melbourne to discuss the massive disconnect between the aspirations for new hospitals and what was actually delivered, identifying the rapid move towards digital hospitals and new IT systems as key risks.
SA opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade describes the Royal Adelaide Hospital build as a “rolling disaster”.
“It is already seven months behind schedule and $640m over budget,” he says. “The hospital is an impressive health asset but I have deep concerns that Labor is unable to deliver quality healthcare. Their poorly thought out plans for outpatients, electronic patient records, clinical research and a reduction in cardiac beds are just the tip of the iceberg of an unfolding health disaster.”
Last month, Minister Snelling, barely concealing his anger, said the government had lost patience with the builders and had no confidence in their deadlines. In a show of brinkmanship, he said a dispute with the builders over fixing defects would be hashed out in the state’s Supreme Court.
“The position they’ve been trying to arrive at is one where we accept the hospital and start moving patients in and, most importantly, start paying for a hospital, and some of the defects we leave to be fixed up after we’ve moved in. Now that’s just not acceptable,” he told reporters.
“We’re sick of being mucked around by the consortium. We want to send an unambiguous message to SAHP that we will not be accepting a hospital that’s anything other than first best.”
For Premier Jay Weatherill’s government, further delay to the hospital opening affects Labor’s positioning before the 2018 election, with pundits predicting a close result.
Next June is now the earliest the government can start moving patients — peak flu season. Both the nurses’ union and public hospital doctors’ association say they will oppose an attempt to shift hospitals in winter, when demand for hospital services is at its highest.
Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation state president Elizabeth Dabars says it will be “particularly dangerous” to move hospitals in winter. “We would be opposing that. Fundamentally in order to make a safe transition you need to have the best possible scenario,” Dabars says. “On its face, it is the most inappropriate time of the year.”
The government and SAHP return to the Supreme Court next Friday in an attempt to negotiate a way for the government to accept the hospital defects, especially those that cannot be fixed.
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
ghs wrote:1) The state government contracted the NRah work out to a consortium - Hansen yuncken, Leighton, etc. If these
companies can't get the work done on schedule, then the state government shouldn't have contracted the work
out to them. To say that the delays are the fault of the contractors is just an excuse. The state government are
ultimately responsible.
2) If the builders were paying for $1 million per day since the middle of this year then they would have gone
broke by now. The state government is paying for the delays at the expense of the taxpayer.
1) How was the government supposed to know the consortium would fudge things up this bad? If they had a crystal ball, then this state would be the envy of the universe.
Does Hanson Yuncken or Leighton have a history of not delivering projects on time with cost blow outs and all sorts of delays? No?
Did the two companies in partnership, offer the best tender to the government? Yes?
2) The state government is not paying $1 million a day, yet. That's why they are taking every opportunity to not accept hand over, because independent inspectors have found faults, and it is up to the consortium to fix those faults, and the government is under no obligation to accept hand over of a building/complex that does not meet the specifications in the contracts. If they were paying $1 million a day, the opposition would have made sure you knew about it through their mouthpieces in the Murdoch press.
If the building/complex was to the specifications in the contracts, then the government wouldn't have a leg to stand on, and it's own lawyers would advise them to accept hand over and not waste time in the courts, as the consortium's lawyers would bend the state government over in court, IF the consortium had met it's contractual obligations.
I'm no lawyer but christ all mighty you like to let your imagination do the talking for you.
FYI, the builders in September or November were seeking $50 million or more from their creditors. Why do you think that is?
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
Mate,rev wrote:
1) How was the government supposed to know the consortium would fudge things up this bad? If they had a crystal ball, then this state would be the envy of the universe.
Does Hanson Yuncken or Leighton have a history of not delivering projects on time with cost blow outs and all sorts of delays? No?
Have Hanson Yuncken or Leighton successfully delivered a large scale hospital like this previously ?
Large scale government projects nearly always blow out. Take a look at the defence industry here in South Australia. Everyone knows about the
problems and cost blow outs with the building of the Collins class submarines. The follow up project at Osborne was the Air Warfare Destroyers which
has also suffered from major delays and cost blow outs. There was also a significant amount of work done by BAE Systems here in Adelaide on an aircraft project called Wedgetail which blew out like you wouldn't believe. The blow outs with this project weren't reported by the media so much because the build work was done in the US.
These defence projects are obviously the responsibility of the federal government. However, it just goes to show that with large scale projects worth billions of dollars there will inevitably unexpected problems which need to be factored into the timeline / schedule. The state government should have known this. When the project was first planned, instead of promising to have the hospital open mid 2016, they should have scheduled in a 12 month contingency period and told the public that it will be open in mid 2017.
Don't defend the project just because you are working on it lol.
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
With impeccable timing, I wrote a better version of this just before the site crashed yesterday! Now the muse has passed, here’s a less eloquent effort...
Returning to the minor but intriguing lines-up-the-side-of-the-building matter, had this been going up, say, 30 years ago (with all the excitement of emerging branches of nuclear medicine such as fast neutron therapy present at that time), and with a cancer focus, I’d understand the neutron connection. As a general medical teaching building covering the whole range of health-related activities and with it being built today, I’m not sure why neutrons (not recognisably depicted at that), are fitting. Especially with the decline in nuclear medicine research that’s happened in recent years, and with the spotlight firmly on other areas of medicine that are far more specialised and specific to the patient. Nuclear treatment is expensive, specialised, in great demand, and there’ll be further advances made in that line of research, no doubt about any of that, but I can’t see why it would be singled out in a general medical building. So, what am I missing? Seems to me there are plenty of other motifs more fitting.
I know there’s a Twitter account for the uni – I’ll drop them a line and find out what the lines are actually supposed to be!
Returning to the minor but intriguing lines-up-the-side-of-the-building matter, had this been going up, say, 30 years ago (with all the excitement of emerging branches of nuclear medicine such as fast neutron therapy present at that time), and with a cancer focus, I’d understand the neutron connection. As a general medical teaching building covering the whole range of health-related activities and with it being built today, I’m not sure why neutrons (not recognisably depicted at that), are fitting. Especially with the decline in nuclear medicine research that’s happened in recent years, and with the spotlight firmly on other areas of medicine that are far more specialised and specific to the patient. Nuclear treatment is expensive, specialised, in great demand, and there’ll be further advances made in that line of research, no doubt about any of that, but I can’t see why it would be singled out in a general medical building. So, what am I missing? Seems to me there are plenty of other motifs more fitting.
I know there’s a Twitter account for the uni – I’ll drop them a line and find out what the lines are actually supposed to be!
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
It will be interesting to hear what they say - I asked someone on the Uni AHMS project team at the 2016 wrap up party late last year and was told they are meant to represent something even less relevant (ie no relevance at all, and probably not ever) to medical research than neutrons... Neutrinos! They were shaking their head in disbelief as much as me... If there were depictions of Neurons on the side of the building, well that could have made some sense. If anyone ever asks me, I'm telling them the lines & dots are meant to represent stars and constellations, because that looks visually plausible & its thematically related to the Uni crest.jim_c500 wrote:With impeccable timing, I wrote a better version of this just before the site crashed yesterday! Now the muse has passed, here’s a less eloquent effort...
Returning to the minor but intriguing lines-up-the-side-of-the-building matter, had this been going up, say, 30 years ago (with all the excitement of emerging branches of nuclear medicine such as fast neutron therapy present at that time), and with a cancer focus, I’d understand the neutron connection. As a general medical teaching building covering the whole range of health-related activities and with it being built today, I’m not sure why neutrons (not recognisably depicted at that), are fitting. Especially with the decline in nuclear medicine research that’s happened in recent years, and with the spotlight firmly on other areas of medicine that are far more specialised and specific to the patient. Nuclear treatment is expensive, specialised, in great demand, and there’ll be further advances made in that line of research, no doubt about any of that, but I can’t see why it would be singled out in a general medical building. So, what am I missing? Seems to me there are plenty of other motifs more fitting.
I know there’s a Twitter account for the uni – I’ll drop them a line and find out what the lines are actually supposed to be!
At least most of the baffling interior design ideas that popped up from time to time appear to have been averted (I'll find out in June, when they let us start working in the building).
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
Well, after a first reply saying they'd speak to someone from the project team and get back to me, I received this response to my tweet to the uni about the lines on the side of the building: "... the shapes are a combination of the reflection of the railway lines that border the north of the building and the stars of the Southern Cross. Hope this helps."
If it is anything more obscure, it seems that the project team isn't aware of it! I'll go with this explanation over neutrons every time.
If it is anything more obscure, it seems that the project team isn't aware of it! I'll go with this explanation over neutrons every time.
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monotonehell
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[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
lolwut?jim_c500 wrote:Well, after a first reply saying they'd speak to someone from the project team and get back to me, I received this response to my tweet to the uni about the lines on the side of the building: "... the shapes are a combination of the reflection of the railway lines that border the north of the building and the stars of the Southern Cross. Hope this helps."
If it is anything more obscure, it seems that the project team isn't aware of it! I'll go with this explanation over neutrons every time.
Exit on the right in the direction of travel.
[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
Which part is confusing?monotonehell wrote:lolwut?
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monotonehell
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[COM] Re: Uni of Adelaide - Med School | 70m | 15lvl | $120m
None of your explanation. Just the madness and miscommunication in the entire thread up to now.jim_c500 wrote:Which part is confusing?monotonehell wrote:lolwut?
Exit on the right in the direction of travel.
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