Richard Thomson and Pete Hodgson’s desperation in the ODT (October 8) to justify their fruitless years of toil touting for a complete new hospital is almost unseemly.
They claim it’s all been looked at before, nothing to see here. If that is correct then why the desperation to stop any sort of review of New Zealand’s largest building project?
If a complete new rebuild is as compelling as they claim, it will be obvious. It is certainly not obvious or compelling to me and anyone else who has relevant experience.
Mr Thomson in particular, while having no construction expertise, is determined that his new-build (at horrendous cost) view should prevail. All his assertions/excuses as to why the ward block cannot be refurbished are easily set aside, to wit: "In an earthquake ... . building would remain standing but plant would be wrecked as did not meet IL4 standards."
The extremely obvious answer is that with a refurbishment, most, if not all, plant would be replaced and new seismic restraints are very easy to install to IL4, typically comprising clips, braces and rubber bearers. Services suspended less than 400mm often require no bracing at all. Even retrofitting is not difficult with ceilings removed.
Mr Thomson would have been better to have kept quiet about the seismic restraints, as the new outpatient building’s seismic restraints defy belief (and any form of rational cost).
Its ceilings are a forest of fabricated steel restraints for services and partitions, because the outpatient building is a steel-framed flexible design. The existing ward block is a much stiffer concrete structural frame making seismic restraint very simple.
"External concrete fabric has concrete cancer": Fact — The ward block has a very limited amount of concrete repair and there is or was already around $20 million budgeted for this work in the existing budgets.
"Column placement did not allow for creation of modern efficient ward configurations": Can Mr Thomson explain then why the ward block has fewer columns per sq m of floor space than the new outpatients building? Column placement can be very easily incorporated into refurbishment designs at concept stage— this is as natural to good designers as breathing.
The new outpatient building has columns at an 8.4m x 8.4m grid, and a forest of diagonal K braces which seriously impede wall space availability and planning. By comparison, the ward block has a central core of columns and beams that are closer together at the centre and wider at the outer grids. They range from 5m-12m centres.
The ward block concrete structures do not require diagonal braces because concrete columns and beams carry greater spans and loads than typical steel construction.
"Ceilings too low for modern practice": Extra ceiling height is only really required for theatre and ICU spaces, and clearly the existing theatres are fit for purpose as is the newly constructed ICU. It is irresponsible to make some nice-to-have-but-not-essential extra ceiling height the trigger to spend hundreds of millions more. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of (very) good.
The biggest consumer of ceiling space is supply and extract air ductwork and there is a lot of flexibility to make ducts wider and flatter as one example to reduce ceiling space heights if required.
"Fixing the services would require emptying of two floors at a time and where do you decant ... . while you do this?": This has already been answered. The Otago Medical School offices and Health Board administration offices, occupying two levels, move out of the ward block, freeing up two floors. There will also be other non-clinical activities that can be moved in the short term. Finishing the outpatients building will also provide lots of options for other spaces to move from the ward block.
"Re-lifing option takes 4-5 years longer": The reality is that the outpatients building is well behind programme and falling into a chasm — all the difficult close co-ordination work is about to start.
The comparable new hospital building at Christchurch Hospital (built by CPB) has only been fully commissioned this year. It commenced in 2014 or 2015, (initial cost circa $500m) and is years late.
The current Christchurch Metro Sports Complex, also a CPB project, has similar problems, as has any number of Fletcher major projects going back a few years.
The inescapable fact is that major new builds of this complexity almost never achieve anything close to programme.
With a refurbishment with clear floors you are already working within an existing shell, thereby greatly eliminating risks, and floors can be completed on staged and overlapping contracts, so the project is not hostage to one aggressive contractor, or one subcontractor going broke, as happened in Christchurch.
Anyone with actual relevant building experience at this scale will know that a refurbishment will be quicker and less risk and less cost, given the awful track record of new builds.
"Refurbishment ... only 6% cheaper": The very obvious rebuttal to this is that this alleged very small saving (which I do not accept) was that it was in comparison to the $1.4b budget, not the now $2.2b-$3b budget.
It is impossible that Mr Thomson and Mr Hodgson do not know this. It is very disingenuous of them to parrot this 6% saving out of context and it is easy to see why Minister Chris Bishop dismisses Mr Hodgson’s comments as "random reckonings". The saving could easily be $1b.
A closer second look is very much needed.
I urge the government not to use the same design consultants responsible for the debacle to date, or at least to include some actual building industry figures who are experienced in successful refurbishment projects to get a balanced and objective view of the relative risks and costs of both options.
Lastly, one issue that is never acknowledged by those desperate for a new hospital is the massive environmental benefits gained by recycling and re-using Dunedin’s largest building — in its entirety.
■Russell Lund is a Dunedin developer.
