Promenade - Megathread

[Nellie]

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=50126&headline=In this week's Manx Independent%3A Is govt really bound by a contract to run the horse trams this year%3F&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2019

So, it seems that Harmer, Black, and Robinson have, between them, lied to Tynwald, the Public, the Tynwald Scrutiny Committee, and the media,  about having a "contractual obligation" to run the Horse Trams, in 2019. 

Well done to IOM Newspapers for asking what was a pretty obvious question, and getting an equally predictable answer. Now, Mr Butt, have you got what it takes to really put the boot in, and force a couple of resignations. Or are we all quite happy to have a bunch of liars running this show? 

Of course, we all know that the shadow of the odious Ian Longworth is in the background here, no doubt manipulating this feeble trio to lie, on his behalf, so he can carry on playing trains and trams, even though he's supposed to have retired.

 

[thesultanofsheight]

7 minutes ago, Nellie said:

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=50126&headline=In this week's Manx Independent%3A Is govt really bound by a contract to run the horse trams this year%3F&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2019

So, it seems that Harmer, Black, and Robinson have, between them, lied to Tynwald, the Public, the Tynwald Scrutiny Committee, and the media,  about having a "contractual obligation" to run the Horse Trams, in 2019. 

No surprises there. 

Harmer is a pathetically weak man and he’s surrounded by a team of faintly accomplished pathological liars. 

[ecobob]

1 hour ago, Nellie said:

Or are we all quite happy to have a bunch of liars running this show? 

 

They’ve been running the show for 2000 years. The insanity is that you expected anything different. 

Aye. Harmer. They couldn’t wait to get Crookall out of Peel and they got Harmer instead. How ironic that they now look back at Crookall and think he wasn’t that bad after all. Could have been worse though, they might have got the dentist. 

[Non-Believer]

The DOI is simply a department of a scale both in size and egos that it is unmanageable for its political members. It runs amok and its heads run rings around said politicos. Proven time and time again.

[piebaps]

3 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

Conage and signage hired-in costs for the Promenade works SAID to be £350k to date...

No it isn't. That is fake news.

The total bill for all traffic management including cones and signs was £355988.26. There is no separate breakdown for coning and signage as it was part of an all inclusive tender.

Source FOI request 24.07.2019

[finlo]

22 minutes ago, piebaps said:

No it isn't. That is fake news.

The total bill for all traffic management including cones and signs was £355988.26. There is no separate breakdown for coning and signage as it was part of an all inclusive tender.

Source FOI request 24.07.2019

So even more then!

[Non-Believer]

2 hours ago, piebaps said:

No it isn't. That is fake news.

The total bill for all traffic management including cones and signs was £355988.26. There is no separate breakdown for coning and signage as it was part of an all inclusive tender.

Source FOI request 24.07.2019

Pedantry, PB. Almost on a par with saying we didn't pay Peel Port's legal expenses, we paid the expenses of another Peel company.

How much does the DOI reckon it's saving by out sourcing this?

Edited August 9, 2019 by Non-Believer
Typo

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

Pedantry, PB. Almost on a par with saying we didn't pay Peel Port's legal expenses, we paid the expenses of another Peel company.

How much does the DOI reckon it's saving by out sourcing this?

Here's the response in full:

Quote

"Further to FoI request 872665, 'What is the cost of coning and signage for the repair of Douglas Promenade', please state where the cones were obtained/purchased from?

If the cones were not purchased and are being rented, please state the daily rental per cone and time period for rental, the budget for this outlay and from who the cones are being rented from? If the cones are a blend of purchased and rented, apportion the costs as per the above criteria."

In our reply we have included the information from our response to the substantially similar previous FOI request (872665) for ease of reading.

“The cost of an ongoing traffic management resource including the coning and signage for the repair of Douglas Promenade is £355,988.26.”

The figure quoted is the total Tender sum submitted by the Contractor to provide various aspects of traffic management for the duration of the scheme. As such the cost of the cones and signage, being just one part of the traffic management scheme, is not separately indicated.

For clarity therefore, the cones and signs being used on the project are neither owned nor leased by the Isle of Man Government. The tender was for the supply, locating, relocating and use of all traffic management equipment including signs and cones during the scheme.

But I'm sure that the DoI must be saving money on this, because we always get told by people on here that the solution to anything is to privatise it.

[Roger Mexico]

Meanwhile there's another FoI request that the DoI has answered very speedily today:

Quote

We write further to your request which was received on 6 August 2019 and which states (numbered for ease of reference):

"1. What is the reason for the 9 week behind programme.
2. Has the Contractor made an application to extend the Contract
3. What is the expendture to date and its comparison to the expendture flow in the contract"

1. The Contractor is behind on the Accepted Programme for several reasons:
• Unforeseen underground services encountered during excavation work have resulted in the need for the isolated redesign of proposals, some utility service diversions which result in delays to construction work and subsequently the construction programme
• Additional utility service work has been instructed as the need arises during construction. This additional work has impacted on construction and caused delay to the programme.

2.
• The works are being carried out under a NEC4 Contract
• There is no mechanism within this form of Contract for the Contractor to make an ‘application’ to extend the Contract
• The Project Manager issues Instructions and Compensation Events to cover additional works
• The Contractor is currently re-programming the works to take account of the additional instructed works which may result in a revised Completion Date for the whole of the work.

3.
• Actual construction expenditure to date (net after retention) as of end of July is £3,778,704

• Forecast construction expenditure (net after retention) up to end of July was £5,371,368

Which is obviously the closest we are going to get to some sort of explanation.

[woolley]

On 8/7/2019 at 2:10 PM, Max Power said:

Well I think they are doing quite well and making good progress, there I've said it!

I wouldn't dispute this. I do take issue that what we are getting does not appear to be as extensive as what we were told was needed. Therefore we can hope that it will be appreciably less expensive.

[Ham_N_Eggs]

14 minutes ago, Grounds Keeper Willy said:

And after everyone has kicked off and people like Alf Cannan have had to get involved. 

He should have been involved in the first place. The Council of Ministers should have realised these problems were happening or was Harmer not being honest with them?

[thesultanofsheight]

21 hours ago, Grounds Keeper Willy said:

Well yes and no. It shouldn’t take the treasury minister and COMIN to oversee a project like this. They have only had to get involved now because the people actually overseeing it seem to be complete idiots. We should be able to do a project like this with minimal disruption to all. In fact I think Harmer promised that there would be minimal disruption to all. But then again everyone except COMIN knew that was total rubbish with their track record. 

Everyone knew it would be a total disaster as that’s the default project delivery of the DOI. But mistakenly they seemed to believe them this time when they told COMIN that it wouldn’t be the usual clusterfuck of ineptitude. That seems to have been the main mistake made by Tynwald. 

[Non-Believer]

The promenade project is the biggest undertaking that the DOI, or any of its predecessors, have undertaken in living memory.

Given that the backdrop to this over the past few years has been a lack of experience in such project scale, arising from a large amount of departmental redundancies and cutbacks courtesy of a "skint" Govt (at least at coalface level but possibly also loss of experience at the strategic level), then it is perhaps little wonder that a "struggle" has ensued?

[finlo]

42 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

The promenade project is the biggest undertaking that the DOI, or any of its predecessors, have undertaken in living memory.

Given that the backdrop to this over the past few years has been a lack of experience in such project scale, arising from a large amount of departmental redundancies and cutbacks courtesy of a "skint" Govt (at least at coalface level but possibly also loss of experience at the strategic level), then it is perhaps little wonder that a "struggle" has ensued?

Well all that remains of the Doi is highly renumerated chinless pen pushers is it any wonder they're clueless? 

[Uhtred]

On 8/9/2019 at 7:37 PM, Ham_N_Eggs said:

... or was Harmer not being honest with them?

Whenever he is interviewed or speaks in Tynwald, Harmer sounds so utterly inarticulate, lacking in knowledge, halting and uninformed, that I suspect he has not been dishonest with COMIN, but is simply incapable of providing a cogent report on progress. I am quite genuinely at a loss to understand how he gained an engineering degree from Cambridge. Perhaps he’s suffered some form of brain injury subsequently. It sounds like it. 

Edited August 11, 2019 by Uhtred