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New Stadium Details And Discussions

TC18

Lurker
Jan 27, 2011
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1,699
Unfortunately that sort of thing happens in a lot of industries, what is also not surprising is that because Spurs and Mace responded to the original Construction News article and gave them air time, they will continue spouting any old outrageous story in the hope of another bite and more air time.
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030
The spin is of course malicious, but I wish I could post that the Daily Mail story bullshit. Obviously, I don't know the inner workings of the stadium site, but I think what's malicious about the story is the implication that this stuff is peculiar to the Tottenham development.

It isn't. The British building industry is generally not well-managed. Margins are very small, management is complacent and loose, site supervision is lackadaisaical and stuff like drinking booze during working hours is not very unusual.
 

TottenhamLegend

Well-Known Member
Jun 13, 2012
3,273
9,439
I've heard a whisper we've asked to switch the U23 game away at Blackburn on 28/09 to be a home game for us the following week. Logic says this is so it can become a test event for the new ground?

I've heard that from someone on the Blackburn end though, so the stadium bit is a total guess but don't know why else we'd ask. This guy has no track record so big pinch of salt to take with this.
In the interest of transparency and honesty, I can now only assume this was total bollocks! Oh well, I'll leave 'ITK' to 'ITKs' in future :censored:
 

Dzejkob

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2012
785
3,215
Fucking Daily Mail. We could have got some decent Polish builders in if it wasn’t for their meddling.
Yeah if that had happened, I'm sure we wouldn't have had reports like that, my nation is known in whole europe for keepeing away from drugs and alcohol...
 

Dougal

Staff
Jun 4, 2004
60,346
129,922
Yeah if that had happened, I'm sure we wouldn't have had reports like that, my nation is known in whole europe for keepeing away from drugs and alcohol...
But you can handle it. Few cans of the high scrabble score for breakfast and build a stadium in the afternoon.
 

spud

Well-Known Member
Sep 2, 2003
5,850
8,794
"Sources within the construction industry claim Spurs face a bill in the region of £1.2bn to complete their new stadium....."

You have to love the way this works. Think of a number, ask whether it's true, and when you get the denial make up a story quoting 'sources' to give it some bogus credibility.

I used to think that you had to have some ability to write and/or integrity to be a journalist. The more I read, the less true this becomes.
 

LexingtonSpurs

Well-Known Member
Aug 27, 2013
13,456
39,042
I'm sure any bill relating to the delays will be heading the way of Mace
Based on the article, I am not as confident.

It sounds like Levy thought he could shave a few pounds off the cost if the Stadium was done early. The flip side was Spurs were on the hook if the project ran late. Had there been a fixed-rate contract, MACE presumably would have budgeted for a delivery date of June 2019. So, MACE will simply claim that a delivery date of August 2018, was never feasible, though they tried their best...
 

ERO

The artist f.k.a Steffen Freund - Mentalist ****
Jun 8, 2003
5,910
5,226
Based on the article, I am not as confident.

It sounds like Levy thought he could shave a few pounds off the cost if the Stadium was done early. The flip side was Spurs were on the hook if the project ran late. Had there been a fixed-rate contract, MACE presumably would have budgeted for a delivery date of June 2019. So, MACE will simply claim that a delivery date of August 2018, was never feasible, though they tried their best...
Sounds like how Levy usually operates. Take a huge financial risk on an early deadline that is completely in the hands of someone else... :cautious:
 

theShiznit

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2004
17,800
23,813
Sounds like how Levy usually operates. Take a huge financial risk on an early deadline that is completely in the hands of someone else... :cautious:
Yeah that's right up there as one of his favourite things, rewarding incompetence.
 

mil1lion

This is the place to be
May 7, 2004
42,344
77,596
Based on the article, I am not as confident.

It sounds like Levy thought he could shave a few pounds off the cost if the Stadium was done early. The flip side was Spurs were on the hook if the project ran late. Had there been a fixed-rate contract, MACE presumably would have budgeted for a delivery date of June 2019. So, MACE will simply claim that a delivery date of August 2018, was never feasible, though they tried their best...
More like MACE claimed it would be done by September in order to get the work and that's why we went with them. There's no chance we would pay the extra because a contractor fucked up and caused delays.
 

DannyNZ

Well-Known Member
Jul 3, 2017
1,740
4,726
The construction world on big projects like the stadium is quite small. General disbelief that Tottenham did not negotiate a fixed price contract or similar but the talk down here in NZ was no-one was prepared to take on such a contract and with constantly changing design who would take on that risk. Unfortunately it would appear we are in for a lot of the pain from the stadium delay and will be lucky if it only ends up costing 1.2 billion. If you want the real reason we were absent from the TW look no further.
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030
The construction world on big projects like the stadium is quite small. General disbelief that Tottenham did not negotiate a fixed price contract or similar but the talk down here in NZ was no-one was prepared to take on such a contract and with constantly changing design who would take on that risk. Unfortunately it would appear we are in for a lot of the pain from the stadium delay and will be lucky if it only ends up costing 1.2 billion. If you want the real reason we were absent from the TW look no further.

I'm seeing several references to "fixed price contracts". There is no such thing in the British construction industry. I know from experience: I was part of a group trying to innovate just such things, called "partnering contracts" or "open book contracts", in the 90s. It turned out to be impossible to enforce, no matter how much pre-works sharing and co-operation one did, because it always involved the contractor taking on the risk of cost increases. Whenever a dispute came to court, precedent and case-law repeatedly ruled any such measures out as unfair contract terms. If a contractor, in all good faith, entered into a partnering deal and then lost money, their "claims department" would always come up with loopholes to screw some extra money out of the contract. Even if they never went to court, there would be a commercial settlement, just to get the damned thing off everyone's agenda and move on to the next scheme.

So instead, my area, which was affordable housing, abandoned traditional contract procurement and went for design-and-build contracts instead. You can transfer the financial risk to the contractor if you also transfer the design responsibility to the contractor - that's legal. But it comes with a cost in terms of quality: the developer loses control of the detailed design. You cannot seriously think that Daniel Levy and THFC would do that.

I got out of project-managing building contracts because I wasn't willing to put up with the dilution of quality and cheapskate shit that every contractor on a D&B job would try to get away with. You can spot these D&B housing estates all over London: the overall design of the buildings is quite imaginative, because it was devised by the developer's architect to get planning consent, but they are let down with cheap bricks, badly detailed windows, shoddy roofing details and half-cooked landscaping introduced by the contractor to save money and increase profit.

Instead, THFC went for a third option, which is construction management. The developer enters into the individual subcontracts (roofing, electrics, etc.) directly and they appoint a "construction manager", rather than a contractor, to coordinate everything: in this case, that is Mace. Mace have overall responsibility, but they are not cash-flowing the build and paying the subcontractors. The design control remains with the developer, but they have to do a hell of a lot of detailed work letting all these individual contracts and they are still exposed to the financial consequences of mistakes, unless they can charge liquidated damages against the construction manager.

I don't believe the rumour that Mace have no liability for damages for late completion. The usual thing with construction management is that you balance the damages clause with positive financial incentives for exceeding targets: if certain operations finish early, the manager gets paid more.

But the main point here is that the notion of a "fixed price contract" in the British construction industry is a fiction.
 
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