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Child Item

Lets be real here: The Children's Hospital is a scam

Hellotonever

BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN! How can a children's hospital for the welfare of our kids possibly be a scam? We need the best and most expensive care in the world!
Yes more expensive than every palace! And more expensive than the pentagon!

Dont worry the taxpayer will foot it!

But lets be real here. Its a scam. There is no way to justify paying so much for a three storey hospital. Its not even that specialized. There are more specialized hospitals that have been renovated multiple times and the cost never went past 1.5 billion!

Its corruption at its finest. BAM and certain party members are 100% laughing all the way to the bank. They're doing this in front of you, the taxpayer and your instinctual reaction is probably to defend this right?

After all how can it be a scam if its legal?

Right?

Pal pick up the phone. 2008 is calling.

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beauf

Anita Blow wrote: »

...

The Mater would've been a great location for the NCH. The site wasn't rejected for political reasons though, An Bord Pleanala rejected it because it considered it an eye-sore visible from O'Connell St. Not sure I'd agree and it's disappointing it had to move...

...and more importantly it was an over development of the site and unsustainable. One issue that caused a lot of criticism was the unsuitability of the mater for helicopters... Sound familiar.

But as say it's time to move forward to a better future.

noodler

Wanderer78 wrote: »

08 was caused by private debt, nothing to do with public debt, but the hospital shows the skullduggery between governments and major contractors, there's no fcuking way no one knew the orginal quote was gonna work

The public sector had no problem spendong the money raised by private debt.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User wrote: »

Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, opened in June 2015

Cost of building, £75 million

It has 6 operating theatres for emergency and high risk surgery and a dedicated maternity theatre.

4 x-ray rooms.

2 CT scanners, two ultrasound systems, a cardiac catheter lab, an endoscopy room and an MRI scanner.

210 acute beds in seven specialty wards.

14 delivery rooms and two birthing pools in a co-located midwifery-led care unit.

20 en-suite single rooms on the maternity ward.

18 bed ICU.

36 treatment rooms in the emergency department.

Link:--> https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2015-06-16/in-numbers-how-did-it-cost-and-what-is-inside-cramlington-hospital

Bump.... for the benefit of the of the people who may have missed this post.

Choosehowevr.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Bump.... for the benefit of the of the people who may have missed this post.

There was another big hospital in Scotland

Urban setting adult/children's hospital much bigger and a fraction of the cost here

Choosehowevr.

Problem with these jobs ime

If the design and planning isn't right or threadbare , it costs way more to fix it when the job begins

[Deleted User]

TheChizler wrote: »

Yes, so much traffic...

Thats Highfield

Point though..... woosh

[Deleted User]

https://en.strabag-newsroom.com/pressreleases/grand-opening-of-new-childrens-hospital-in-hamburg-2149281

States of the art children's hospital opened in Hamburg in 2017 at a cost of €69.5 million

Geuze

Deleted User wrote: »

https://en.strabag-newsroom.com/pressreleases/grand-opening-of-new-childrens-hospital-in-hamburg-2149281

States of the art children's hospital opened in Hamburg in 2017 at a cost of €69.5 million

69.5 million

18,000 m2

"The new building on the campus of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf has a gross floor area of about 18,000 m² and comprises emergency room, outpatient centres, inpatient wards, children’s ICU and a bone marrow transplantation unit."

148 beds

Choosehowevr.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/inside-scotlands-new-900million-super-hospital-5545387

1900 adult and children beds ,£900 million

beauf

noodler wrote: »

The public sector had no problem spendong the money raised by private debt.

Having no problem spending, caused the debt in the first place. Seems like the perfect partnership.

jelem

yes you voted in FG+FF again with the wage packet seekers Greens.
Just to add to the farce of how irish citizens treated --- news shows argentina
receiving vaccine Artics (plural), RTE shows ireland a single pallet with 2 (two) boxes.
The excuse of kneeling before usa and eu, well done on all your failings Politics versus health
1 (one) artic of "russian" vaccine would have seen a bigger reprieve but NOT Allowed.
best laugh i had over christmas -- 2 boxes.
dont bother Flame just to excuse the government and your deaths for politics misguided loyalty
to those whom are overpaid and incompetant whilst time and again show they not care about citizens.
Hospital is a minor con job and still some defend the theft and political demand instead of common
sense of ireland hospital being central of country with equal easy access from all counties.

TheChizler

MikeOxsgreen wrote: »

Thats Highfield

Point though..... woosh

It was directed towards anyone thinking you were serious and might use it as a point against that kind of setup. Always landed in Highfield while I was in school there, still does afaik.

beauf

TheChizler wrote: »

It was directed towards anyone thinking you were serious and might use it as a point against that kind of setup. Always landed in Highfield while I was in school there, still does afaik.

The whole issue of the landing off site is missing the point. It's not that you can't make it work, or that it doesn't work elsewhere.

It's that if you are building the world's most expensive hospital it shouldn't require kludges and workarounds from the start. It's not simply the odd compromise for the sake of massive improvements elsewhere either.

They'll have to make it work regardless.

gctest50

Choosehowevr. wrote: »

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/inside-scotlands-new-900million-super-hospital-5545387

1900 adult and children beds ,£900 million

Ireland should've got Alasdair and Brookfield Multiplex to do it :

Alasdair works for Brookfield Multiplex Europe, who also built the new Wembley Stadium and The
Pinnacle skyscraper in London.

He says any complex building is about making the pieces fit together properly, 9on time and on budget.

Alasdair said: “It is like an enormous jigsaw. It is the biggest hospital in the country and there were 12,000 people involved. There are over 7600 rooms and to manage that process takes quite a bit of time and patience.”

Makes the NCH sh**show look like a Wendy house

Choosehowevr.

gctest50 wrote: »

Ireland should've got Alasdair and Brookfield Multiplex to do it :

Alasdair works for Brookfield Multiplex Europe, who also built the new Wembley Stadium and The
Pinnacle skyscraper in London.

He says any complex building is about making the pieces fit together properly, 9on time and on budget.

Alasdair said: “It is like an enormous jigsaw. It is the biggest hospital in the country and there were 12,000 people involved. There are over 7600 rooms and to manage that process takes quite a bit of time and patience.”

Makes the NCH sh**show look like a Wendy house

Planning and Design

The fundamentals of trades and construction

You're gonna spend a whole lot more money and mistakes if you skimp on it

[Deleted User]

TheW1zard wrote: »

How about giving a company a contract to build something without telling them what to build!

‘Design & Build’ is the fairly standard approach for projects like this around the world.
https://quantitysurveyor.blog/2020/03/24/design-and-build-contract/
If you want to do a fixed price building contract, you’ll need to wait a couple of years to complete the design work.

beauf wrote: »

So what about Dublin car ownership. Its relevant. Its about how many people use a car to get to the current children's hospitals. Also its not a Dublin hospital. Its a national hospital.

That kind of thinking is throwing good money after bad. Because we’ve always done car-centric planning, you want us to continue doing car-centric planning for ever?
We shouldn’t be thinking about ‘how many use a car’. We should be thinking of how many we can encourage to use alternatives to private car by ensuring good public transport connectivity.

beauf wrote: »

This is bit like saying most of the people in school can't drive so we'll plan that most people will not be drive or be driven to school.

That’s EXACTLY what we should be done – planning schools so that most people will not drive or be driven to school. Until we start doing that kind of planning, most people will continue to drive or be driven to schools.

beauf wrote: »

The experts picked the Mater. In fact different groups picked different locations. Originally they wanted the existing hospitals upgraded and not moved. If they picked the Mater then it was found to be suitable, does that not call into doubt the process that picked the Mater in the first place.

The Dolphin report was done in response to the planning refusal at the Mater. The Mater was off the table at that stage.

beauf wrote: »

Mater is pretty much a twin of James in many regards. But it's interesting two almost identical sites with the same advantages and disadvantages, arguably the Mater is even more central. There was nothing gained changing from the Mater to James.

Well other than political maybe.

Complying with planning law is what was gained by changing from the Mater. Are you suggesting that we should have ignored planning judgements?

gctest50 wrote: »

Here's an interesting design shortcoming, the scumbag responsible should be lynched :
"The top floor of this iconic building is 29.9m high, marginally below the threshold of 30m, which prescribes an automatic requirement for life safety sprinklers," the report said. "It appears that the building has been re-engineered to deliberately avoid an essential life safety system given the fact that the top floor is just 100mm below the threshold for sprinklers."

https://m.independent.ie/news/environment/childrens-hospital-deliberately-designed-to-avoid-installing-sprinklers-claims-fire-brigade-36259501.html

Interesting issue indeed – so in the discussion where the design team are being slated for the costs involved, you’re now slating them for reducing the cost, and you want to lynch the person who reduced the cost.
Are you starting to see the dilemmas facing the public sector on projects like this?

jmayo wrote: »

No, am clever enough and dumb enough to know I know far from everything about anything.
But I do know when somethings can be done better and when planning in this country is never fit for purpose, doesn't even meet current requirements never mind future ones.
Wait a public servant, you wouldn't be in planning by any chance.
Nearly ever public project carried out in this country has been an expensive crock.
Oh yippe we eventually got two linked tram lines but how fooking long did it take and how more expensive than first planned did it work out.
And yes as per usual we will get the refrain about our motorways, bypasses and roads.
Then again I know some of those bypasses and new roads have some very unsual traits and sometimes not very forward thinking features that really makes you scratch your head.

BTW how many crock ups did we make before we started getting them somewhat right or should we forget about M50 and Toll bridge ?

This is so far off reality it is clear that you really haven’t got a clue about what goes on here.
You are correct to say that ‘something can be done better’. Every public project can be done better, given more money and more time. But the real world doesn’t work that way, given the competing demands for resources. So the competing pressure to have the hospital available and open at an early stage meant that they didn’t have the luxury of doing a traditional, full detailed design spec. This ‘design and build’ approach is used for major infrastructural projects all over the world – a trade off between reducing the overall timescale while accepting additional risk around project costs.
And the oul cliché of the ‘every public project’ is of course nonsense. You’ve never heard about the vast majority of public projects, because they happen quietly, under the radar, with no fuss and little publicity. It might look like there are loads of problem projects, but the reality is that just don’t hear about the non-problematic ones because they don’t make good news copy.

jmayo wrote: »

Lets just say I know a fair bit about dealing with and supplying our hospital system.
Oh and other half works in medical system.
So I have been around the block and know how inept the whole system can be.

Also I know people that either have to sadly visit the likes of Crumlin, Temple and probably in future the James location.

Oh and I know quite amount of people that have to visit those places to carry out work.
And public transport doesn't work for them.
James site is a pain to have to visit.

Oh and I am a taxpayer and have kids who will be paying for this as well.

So just gossip then, no actual data or factual knowledge. People aren’t being forced onto public transport. There is considerable visitor parking in the new hospital, along with great public transport connectivity.

jmayo wrote: »

Do you know how many people live along train lines in this country?
You don't work in Dept of Environment or indeed transport if you think must people travel to Dublin via train, never mind those with sick kids.

This might be a surprise to you, but you don’t HAVE to live along a train line to take the train. You can do what other people do which is to drive to your nearest train station and park-and-ride for your journey. The Meath/Cavan/Monaghan/Donegal route is poorly serviced, but just about every other part of the country has a rail line to Dublin (and hence good connectivity to the James site via Connolly or Hueston) within 30-50 km.
One big reason for why those people don’t take the train at present is because we don’t consider public transport connectivity when building these facilities. That’s exactly what has to change.

TheW1zard

D&B contracts have agreed prices, and certainly have a spec.

saabsaab

I've read that there's no helicopter landing site!

flazio

I've one simple question. From where we are standing, right now, we don't have a time machine here, and considering as much of the consequences of what I am about to ask as possible.
What is the correct course of action going into 2021? Cut our losses? Press on with the hospital?
Pump loads of legal money into a tribunal?
Where we are standing right now, armed with what we know, what's the next step?

Wanderer78

flazio wrote:

I've one simple question. From where we are standing, right now, we don't have a time machine here, and considering as much of the consequences of what I am about to ask as possible. What is the correct course of action going into 2021? Cut our losses? Press on with the hospital? Pump loads of legal money into a tribunal? Where we are standing right now, armed with what we know, what's the next step?

Plough on, it 'll be needed

Pete_Cavan

There is a helipad;

https://www.nchplanning.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NPH-A-BDP-PL-05-00-1200-FLOOR-PLAN-LEVEL-05.pdf

[Deleted User]

TheW1zard wrote: »

D&B contracts have agreed prices, and certainly have a spec.

They have a spec, but they don't have a full detailed design spec, because the design work hasn't yet been done - that's the 'design' bit of the 'Design and Build'.

And as the design emerges, so do claims for additional costs arising from any variations from the original outline design.

TheW1zard

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

They have a spec, but they don't have a full detailed design spec, because the design work hasn't yet been done - that's the 'design' bit of the 'Design and Build'.

And as the design emerges, so do claims for additional costs arising from any variations from the original outline design.

I know how it works, you hit the nail on the head there. Additional costs arising and no spec.
Its not the contractors fault.
You still tender for these contracts and additional costs are what is added after whats initially agreed.
Not putting the materials and costs of fitting out a hospital in the original outline design is where the government went wrong.
On any project ive ever worked on including d&bs you dont go to construction without approved construction drawings which have spec, which include costing and approved funding. So lets be real!
I know people who work on this project including a Qs and it is the maddest contract ever full stop!

BrianBoru00

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Do you think that any of the points you raise were not considered by the group of eminent experts that produced the Dolphin Report?

I think "considered" is too broad a word but its a fair point you make and I read the report as a result.... and together with good points particularly from Anita Blow I'm not as "anti St James" as I was but still think it was not the correct option.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Do you honestly think that building the NCH + another hospital several times larger + replacing several national centres of excellence would be cheaper than just building the NCH and tying in with the existing centres of excellence? Think about it for a couple of minutes. Do you really think expanding the scope of the project several fold, adding years to the timeline and greatly increasing the complexity by having to coordinate the transfer of many more seriously ill people (not just children but now also adults) will reduce costs?

The logistics of moving James's would be mindblowing. As I explained before, you can't just move all these highly specialist services and equipment required from James's to a new hospital en mass overnight. You would have to leave everything running at James's to treat patients and set up all new at the new location and get it up and running. Then you have to have an orderly transfer with both centres operating for a period. This type of facilities and equipment costs an absolute fortune, things which our country can only afford one of. The cost of the duplication would be enormous and be a huge asset management challenge. The purchase and serving contracts for one piece of specialist medical equipment can cost millions. Obviously you run down one thing and replace it as it reaches end of life. It would be impossible to have everything in a hospital the size of James's approach end of life around the same time so you will inevitably be replacing equipment with years of life left it them. Any delay to the construction project could also see things having to operate longer than desired because you can't set up the replacement at the old hospital, it needs to wait until the new one is ready. The risks and potential cost and healthcare implications of any delay would dwarf the current NCH project.

With all due respect I believe that's one of the fundamental problems in this country.
Why can't we move the mri machine ? Why do we need a second one up and running - there are other hospitals with MRI machines which could be used in the two days or so it would take to move it.
St. James wouldn't have had to be moved to JCM immediately or even in a couple of years. Specialities could have been moving for the past three years or more.

two points from the Dolphin report stood out-
1. it would take "very substantial investment of human and capital resources...."
without having any even rough projection of what those figures would be.

2. even with these resources it could take "several decades to achieve".

fair enough but it smacks of lack of ambition - -they acknowledge that the amalgamation with Beaumont / RCSI would have to be accelerated

The report was compiled by (an albeit wide range of ) civil servants who aren't renowned for daring and ambitious plans.

And even with those criticisms I could understand the logic behind selecting St. James but for the subsequent dramatic and seemingly never ending escalation in costs which is so pervasive in the public service.

riclad

It would be alot cheaper to build it in dublin 15 or tallaght, the location in the city centre is crowded, eg it will be expensive to build parking space for visitors and staff.
land is cheap in tallaght vs city centre .
it could be sited next to a motorway in tallaght or blanchardstown,
and this hospital will have parents travelling from all over the country.
big building projects tend to get more expensive,
eg the new airport in germany is way over budget.
we have a large shortage of building workers in ireland for the work that has to be done every year

RandomName2

Muahahaha wrote: »

Meaning children with severe and urgent brain injuries may not get to the hospital on time because the helicopter cannot land there. You would have thought this would be a key requirement on where to locate the hospital but no it wasnt.

I don't know the details exactly, but there will definitely be a helipad. (Incidentally, if nothing else, the design of the building is quite nice)

The Coastguard Helicopter is apparently too big to land on the planned helipad. This shouldn't be too big an issue, but if hospital transfer helicopters cannot land that's pretty disastrous.

Mr. Incognito

Here's a link to the report.

People should read it.

It's really an exercise is publicspeak. The considerations given weight were rather ridiculous.

He's a psychologist who was a mate of Ends Kenny. He was not qualified to put such a report together and it shows.

The chan chan man

My favourite part of this extrordinary cost per bed being the highest in the world... for 3 storeys in Kilmainham... is that it doesn’t include a single bed! There’s a further billion or more to be spent fitting the place out!!

Mr. Incognito

I can't upload the report.

People should read it.

It's really an exercise is publicspeak. The considerations given weight were rather ridiculous. I read it years ago and was seething.

He's a psychologist who was a mate of Ends Kenny. He was not qualified to put such a report together and it shows.

Here's a simple analysis extract.

https://www.jackandjill.ie/the-national-childrens-hospital-dolphin-report/

This hospital should have been built in Connolly. Was a no brainier.

salmocab

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

I can't upload the report.

People should read it.

It's really an exercise is publicspeak. The considerations given weight were rather ridiculous. I read it years ago and was seething.

He's a psychologist who was a mate of Ends Kenny. He was not qualified to put such a report together and it shows.

Here's a simple analysis extract.

https://www.jackandjill.ie/the-national-childrens-hospital-dolphin-report/

This hospital should have been built in Connolly. Was a no brainier.

Whilst I think that they made a mess of this I’m not sure that too much of that stacks up. It looks ridiculously simplistic, the problem with a lot of expert reports is the initial terms and weighting can lead to a result that isn’t necessarily the best option overall but it’s the same with counter reports.
This is a mess of a thing it’s either in the wrong place or they’ve committed far too much money to it. Neither is a good thing.