Labor cost
Real professionals literally have to be persuaded to go to work, despite the fact that the cost of their services can be two or even three average wages for the same job, because there are really few of them, and their workload with current work can be two Three months ahead, or even more.
At the same time, just good performers receive the usual average salary, nothing higher than people with a complete lack of qualifications. No one wants and agrees to receive “little”, or rather, in accordance with their qualifications, and they keep the average price level, because there is already a huge shortage of people in the industry during the season. Only at the same time, hacks are often kicked out of the objects, but they manage to earn some of the money and further push prices up.
The increased degree of demanded payment by employees is influenced by a lack of confidence in employers in general. Therefore, people include risks in the price: they didn’t get it there, they didn’t get it, but they bounced back elsewhere.
Construction organizations today are in extremely difficult conditions, when professionals are extremely expensive, and non-professionals are simply expensive, despite the fact that involving them in work has the risk of poor-quality work, violation of deadlines, destruction of building materials, etc. – in short, to losses, the fault of which is all of the above.
Ways out of the situation
I think I managed to show the deepest systemic crisis and imbalance in the industry. We do not have enough managers to sort it all out. People who are strictly forbidden to be trusted are allowed to manage the national economy. It is impossible to improve the situation without changing the socio-economic model, the right, including the electoral one.
We urgently need:
New training programs for managers from among specialists from various industries – "management" has not justified itself;
New mechanisms for the selection and involvement in the state apparatus and the legislative branch of people who started their careers from the very bottom and have reached a certain level of professionalism, understanding all the specifics of their industry;
Work on the education of citizens through the formation of a normal cultural environment, in which managers are also formed, and the adjustment of value orientations from personal benefit to personal contribution;
The system of evaluation criteria and the procedure for the examination of state management decisions for their compliance with the long-term interests of citizens, with the introduction of criminal liability for their violation.
2. Construction and democracy are incompatible
Normal statement, right?
And the point is this. At the heart of democracy is the election of officials of various levels.
Often officials are representatives of any parties. In general, democracy creates a situation in which various people and entire parties are fighting for votes, for ratings and for winning elections.
construction projects of various purposes, especially kindergartens, schools, stadiums, hospitals, houses for migrants, etc. , created “with their participation,” and often even in spite of such participation. become a sort of fat plus in the eyes of voters. Therefore, by the agreed date, or rather by the beginning of the elections, the objects must be handed over at all costs – this is the task facing those who are currently in power.
There is another side of the coin. For example, the president approves some target program, allocates funds for its implementation, and sets specific deadlines. This applies to all the Olympics, International Economic Forums, and the elimination of the consequences of emergencies. The allocated funds are under special control, to break the deadlines is fraught with deprivation of access to the feeder and loss of position. But there are elective positions everywhere, it’s not easy to get this …
So, democracy drives officials into a rigid framework in terms of monitoring the timing of the construction of facilities: on the one hand, voters and elections, on the other, higher-level officials who have exactly the same responsibility to society and a more significant level of tasks to achieve which they will not stand on ceremony with "local officials" for a long time.
All this leads to tight deadlines for design and construction work, for the selection of contractors for their implementation. In general, an emergency. Is it necessary to explain that in such situations an unimaginable number of mistakes are made, threatening, among other things, the durability and safety of buildings. There are many examples of such errors and miscalculations.
But deadlines are deadlines. Therefore, many violations remain uncorrected, or are corrected retroactively, after the ribbon is cut – anything can happen. And all these situations are excellent grounds for forced official forgery, when many, out of fear of losing their jobs, take work at their own peril and risk. Therefore, from the point of view of the safety of construction projects, democracy and elections are a clear hindrance.
3. About some errors in construction documentation leading to losses
I was approached by people from educational organizations, Internet portals that train workers or improve their qualifications, so that I would prepare for them some useful, scientifically oriented, “interesting for their audience” publications … And I told them that it makes no sense to teach their professionals to something like that, or retrain if they make thousands of the dumbest mistakes every day, the same ones over and over again, from which customers and contractors then have serious headaches, up to lawsuits and losses amounting to tens of millions within the framework of just one object…
I insisted and insist on the fact that it is these very elementary examples that designers and estimators need to wash their heads on a daily basis. Personally, about 20% of my work at the construction site was involved in eliminating the consequences of all this – this must be stopped.
You may also encounter them, so do not be too lazy to go through this material – it can help you more than once, at least by paying attention to it.
3.1. Errors in the estimate documentation and their consequences – losses
1. Errors in units or decimal places
Not a very common mistake, but sometimes people make mistakes in the number of decimal places or units of measure. For example, meters – meters, are confused with tens or hundreds of meters – 10 meters, 100 meters, forgetting to divide or multiply the value by 10 or 100, respectively, less often – by 1000.
On one of the objects worth about 700 million rubles. due to such errors, the total estimate turned out to be 90 million rubles. more than it should have been. That is, in fact, the estimates included hundreds or thousands of times more work or materials than can be applied in principle at this facility.
For example, instead of the actual 26 square meters of plaster, the volume was indicated as 2,600 square meters, and instead of the actual 350 kilograms of reinforcement, 350 tons. The case is outstanding, but absolutely real.
Thus, the total cost of these errors amounted to about 15% of the total cost estimate. All these works could not be performed, although they were in the estimate, so we had to bring the estimate in line and terminate the contract for the amount of erroneously overestimated volumes. All this certainly affected the profitability and the level of profitability of the object (the ratio of profit to the cost of work as a percentage).
As
