Leinster House Bicycle Shed

The OPW annual budget is about €100m, so the bike shed is about 0.3% of the total. It's small items like this that get through without ministerial oversight. Basically it's the civil service mindset which seems to be incapable of ensuring value for money.

I wouldn't waste too much energy on the wretched shed: use it to get at the real reasons for the cost of the National Children's Shed at St James'. Now that's real money!.

Saddle rain covers. Nice n cheap

They do, however what do you think will happen to the responsible OPW manager?

How would you suggest the cycle lane on the Dodder park road be improved? It's a main road with no space, unless you plan to cut into the residents front gardens and cut down all the trees along the road.. see how far that will get you when the residents launch a legal case against it.

Greenways are definitely a good thing and for the fraction of the cos of a Luas route.

Ardbraccan limestone was used in Leinster house' construction, not cheap by the sounds of it and probably quite expense to source and have craftsmen to work on I should think..

Did whoever was responsible for signing off on this know the price?

Would they not have told those up the line what the cost was?

As someone above said this is like the cost of a house!

Dont they report into the minister of state is the minister of the day not supposed to be overseeing spend in this department?

If there is is fraud, the assumption being made here is there certainly was. You are also saying that fraud squad should investigate all procurement. Also stating as a fact that it is obvious that there is a "black hole" but that is just your personal belief. You are also blending so many departments into one yet there is a huge amount on procurement going on everyday without any issue.

You may misunderstand the nature of incompetence and how it may well be not an individual responsible nor even a team. Here is an example, client manager wants a new feature in software feature added and creates a team of 3 to explain the features needed to get a consultant firm to add the feature. There A,B and C functions being added. The team get most of the detail for all features but only explain 80% of C thinking they gave 100%. Consultant company prices the job at 990 and 3 weeks work.

Consultant company is asked to do the work and 3 weeks later manager looks at it and asks where is the 20% of C. Shown they never specified this work to the consultant. Team claims they followed the instruction from manager, they go back and look it up, there was some ambiguity from the manager and the team effectively did their job. Then another manager comes in and says they should not have changed A as it effects his teams and need to make a different change. They go back to the consultants and say now A and C have to be modified. Consultants look and say we don't have staff available as you have us working on another project but it will take 3 weeks and 1200 to make these more complex changes and conditions and that is will be 2 months before they can get to it.

Client big boss comes along and asks why is this costing so much to consultant and why it will be late for the deadline coming up. Consultant explains and big boss says can't wait 2 months and the other project can't slip. Consultant explains they have no staff to do both unless they hire freelance consultants to work on the main project and the specialists can be moved to the little project but it will cost 2000 now and it can be done in 4 weeks. Consultants begin the work and discover years ago somebody took a short cut in the code read information that is fed to C is calculated incorrectly and will have to be fixed before the functionality C can be added. Review is done and it will now take 4 weeks and 3000 to fix this issue before coding C but C must go live 6 weeks due to legislation change. Consultants say can't do that unless they take staff off large project. Big boss say it MUST be done, consultant firm say OK but we now have to add more freelance consultants onto the main project putting up costs.

End of the day the 990 job costs= 990+1200+3000=5190 there is also an increase on another project. You tell me who was incompetent, who charged too much and how it should have worked to be cheaper? Are we firing people over this? Did the consultant over charge?

This happens in the private sector just as much as the public sector and variations of this happen all the time.

I dont misunderstand anything the main issue is when something irregular like this shed or the ballooning of the costs of building a hospital goes from 500million to 2 billion (this is the black hole I am taking about) or RTE get caught out paying out irregular payments our system is simply not set up to compel people to answer simple questions, it is not set up to be proactive and actively interrogate as the process is ongoing which could save billions and the powers that be create a big quango like enquiry that takes months/years to get going and to get results which are useless as the people needed to answer the questions simply give a sick note and walk off into the sunset with no questions answered and the enquiry is a waste of time and money and then attention goes to the next irregular event/scandal and after 5 years we have a new set of TDS/politicians who can simply say I wasn't there when that happened. Weather its someone or a company gaining where they shouldn't be or someone who has made a phuck up in their job and has added a cost there should be accountability.

We all know how the civil servants do accountability they promote them like Kev Cardiff after he lost 3 billion in a simple accountancy error and yet those who make mistake after mistake can simply clock watch or dial in sick till its pension time. It does happen in the private sector but if a company is doing a job and after a year or 2 it balloons to 4 times the cost the person/company paying will simply not pay it and it wont cost me as a tax payer a dime. Also in your private sector software analogy the company getting the service will build in both metric and milestones that have to meet and if not the company creating the software will get penalized financially along the way and there will be an active involvement in the process on the part of the person paying (the gov simply dont care what happens to tax payers money, they are like drunks in a strip bar making it rain) and your talking about feature creep here that is hardly the case with the bike shed? Also most project managers who know their stuff will have planned a lot in advance and will have a set in stone definition of what is included for the teams to create if there is something else that is not included its simply a new project/feature and a new cost do you think they added to the bike shed along the way?

The other thing is they are already saying they cant give out info due to a security issue - like its a bike shed, imagine you as the customer asking the software lads who created it to give a breakdown of the increase in fees and them saying sorry security issue, would you pay the increase - no you wouldnt not without understanding why the increase is there.

Honestly that would make a lot more sense for approaching half a million euro.

You seem to be mashing up "common knowledge" with no actual knowledge of processes.How civil servants are promoted now has changed a lot. What you heard about the past was rarely true but impossible now.

I described a situation of how costs can balloon in a project that I have seen similar occur in both the private and public sector. Metric with checks and balance do not come into it nor could the detect the issues coming. Again way off on your assumptions, I have seen private companies pay 20+ times more than the original price and nobody got fired.

Look you have just basically repeated yourself but what I put to you was a real world example of how costs can go way up. Given the details I stated I am asking you to explain what you think should be done in that situation. Explain who is to blame and how to stop it happening again. I used to think like you before I actually saw how things work and understood the reality of working with people on a large scale. I don't know what you do but working in a large organization will mean certain inefficiencies as does working in a small one.

Your hypothetical outline is just that its hypothetical and does not happen too often in the private sector it does happen having said that I have never seen private sector paying 20 times more for something can you elaborate on that one with proof? Also even if a private sector entity paid out 20 times more then they were originally billed for, me as a tax payer does not have to foot the bill. Where is there no knowledge what I outlined is what most project managers who are worth their salt do they will use simple things like RAID and other tactics to minimize threats to their project and yes there can be unforeseen issues as is with most aspects of life having said that in the private sector if an unforeseen issue impacts the cost of a project the person paying will be told and shown like given proof that this unforeseen event happened and added the cost and also that the cost was not added by an individual or company gaining more or making a mistake.

Going out on a limb here.......18?

There is more to come out. The bike shed made a good headline but from what i understand is extensive other works were undertake too.

There's a slight hint of attempted damage limitation about this post.

You seem to be promoting the notion that the government are not responsible for the building of the bike shed they got built next to their offices.

I have seen loads of companies pull back but there is nothing like a deadline of policy/regulation to eliminate any possibility of pulling out of a project. You still aren't really answering the questions put to you. I gave you a scenario and you can't allocate the blame like you said you could.

The best you came up with was they should be informing the client all the time which in the case they did. Your advice was what I said happened

The goal posts are set and they aren't on the Titanic