Re: 鈥淪ewage boss says project facing overruns,鈥� Jan. 19.
It looks like 鈥渄茅jà vu all over again鈥� (Johnson Street Bridge replacement) with cost overruns for Greater Victoria鈥檚 public infrastructure projects.
There is an old building-development truism. Construction projects have three main variables: the scope of the work (the design of the project), the schedule (how much time is allocated to the project, overall, from initial concept to completion; not to be confused with construction schedule, which is only a portion of the project) and finally budget.
The truism is that you can control two of the three variables, or better stated, no more than two variables. The wisdom in the public sphere is choosing what variables are critical and what can carry the risk.
It looks as if the design phase used much of the project鈥檚 time contingency, and the funding partners are not changing the deadline for completion. The design of the project is also pretty well fixed.
The remaining variable is cost/budget. And worse still, the funding formula apparently passes all overruns to the local taxpayers. Each one per cent of project cost overrun equals 2.5 per cent cost increase to the local taxpayers. Ouch!
Mark Brown
Victoria
