On 15/5/19 5:36 pm, Robbie Smith wrote:
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> I read a recent article[1] about why infrastructure costs are so much higher in English-speaking countries (particularly the US, but there are parallels here), and it boils down to us being terrible at project management and asset utilisation.


I suspect the UK can make the US look reasonable. I once saw a figure for project management costs vs other engineering costs for HS1 in the UK. Despite those impressive bridges and all the tunneling, Civil or indeed any 'hard' engineering discipline wasn't top of the list....

'Project Management' is going gang-busters at the Uni I work for - it's the most popular strand in Engineering at the moment. Students are flocking to it because they think there are better prospects at actually getting a job after spending 3 to 4 years getting a degree. (We are turning out more civil/mechanical/electrical engineers than there are actual jobs for them)

If anything we are now over supplied with project managers, but all those large infrastructure projects the government keeps talking about need project managers and lots of them due to the 'compliance' work required for government contracts. Actually paying some tradies to do some actual work is way down the list.

And further down the feeding chain we are not turning out enough trades as no one wants to do hard work and the long hours. And because not enough people are doing trades, the ones that do get through can make plenty of money, but they do long hours to get it.