Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith P.
... I can only imagine how long it will take the province to complete construction on this scale. We may well be talking decades at the pace they normally move at. I wonder if this will turn out to be big enough by then, despite its impressive size.
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I wonder, also, if this being a P3 project will change the pace of anything. Will be interesting to see what impact, if any, that will have on both the design/planning and construction phases.
When it comes to design, my perception is that everything is planned to the bare minimum, where the pressure is on politicians and bureaucrats to keep the upfront costs low (long-term costs, be damned). If the Private "P" in the P3 is incentivized properly, I can see how overbuilding or building in some redundancy, could provide longer-term savings and be more appealing to them. This is one of the pitfalls of Operating Costs and Capital Costs being separate from one another, with no ability to trade between budgets - it means, at a simplistic level, that if a floor covering is more expensive than something that meets minimum quality standards, but will save maintenance costs and pay for the increased cost in five years, the push is to go for something as cheap as possible (but that meets minimum quality standards) - someone can fight over the operations costs later (and we see the results in all the deferred maintenance). Many private companies take a longer-term view of their investments in physical infrastructure and look at total costs rather than just immediate costs.