Interesting Links for 23-6-2011

[andrewducker]

• Violent video games lead to decreases in violent crime
  (tags: crime games research violence society)
• Psychologists find link between ovulation and women's ability to identify men's sexual orientation
  (tags: lgbt sexuality hormones perception)
• Oracle's Java patents case against Google's Android weakening
  (tags: java oracle google android mobile_phones patents)
• The two sides of the brain are less synchronised in autistic toddlers
  (tags: autism children brains)
• How to Market Plastic Vaginas: Don’t Call Them Vaginas. (How the fleshlight came to be)
  (tags: sex marketing)
• Women's prejudice linked to their menstrual cycle
  (tags: women hormones prejudice menstruation)
• Scrapping Edinburgh trams would cost £750m. Completing to St Andrews Square - £770m. Easy decision, if you ask me.
  (tags: trams edinburgh transport)
• Stanford team devises a better solar-powered water splitter (I wonder what the efficiency is like)
  (tags: solar solarpower electricity hydrogen)

Comments

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I'd almost forgotten how my reproductive system gives me superpowers!

[andrewducker]

And makes you prejudiced!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I've always considered the female reproductive system to be a superpower.

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

In a shocking twist it turns out women are people!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Who knew?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Surviving it certainly feels like a superpower some days ;-)

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

It can create life, bring me to my knees and cause all intelligence to be drained away from men.

If that's not powerful, nothing is.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Holy geezus, how did the Trams project wind up as such a catastrophe. I just... don't have words for it.

[andrewducker]

I'm going to largely blame it on the inability of the council to write decent contracts.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does seem like some very savvy builders lawyers moved in like sharks on some... pretty damned dumb councellors who were prepared to sign anything put in front of them.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

It's really not that simple. If the council attempted to set a fixed fee for the tender process with contractors, no private company is going to give a competitive tender because they cannot predict many of the costs. One of the problems with rail construction contracts like this is that the costs cannot be accurately estimated beforehand.

Consider just one part of the contract, which is to move utilities. You can't build tram tracks on top of cables, pipes etc. because if there is a burst pipe, you can’t dig up the tram tracks like you can a road. So basically roads have to be dug up and pipes moved. Problem 1 is that nobody knows how many pipes, cables etc. are down there. People have been putting pipes under the streets of Edinburgh for probably 200 years or more. Add in the complication that whilst there may have been records kept of pipes laid in the past 40 years or so, there is no single map or plan, and many were laid by companies that no longer exist.

So in this sort of contract, normally a set fee is agreed with the contractor per meter of cable, pipe etc. that has to be diverted. This will form part of the tender. But here we encounter problem 2. Many of these cables etc. belong to utility companies, who will not permit just any old contractor to move their pipes. So companies bidding for the construction contract have to negotiate with utility companies to agree a similar pricing structure for moving pipes. But there may be as many as 20 companies planning to submit tenders - the utility companies will not open negotiations with all of them. In fact they will not talk to any of them because it’s frankly not worth their time. They will only open negotiations with a single contractor once the contract has been awarded by the council. The result is that tenders are submitted with all sorts of variables in them.

Often what then happens is the lowest possible price the tender could result in is publicised as being the cost of the project, so when the unexpected occurs the project is instantly “overbudget”.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

all correct.

what would have been *really* nice, though, is having the Client [ie, a named individual who happened to be working directly for the Council] having a position that vaguely resembled that of a Manager.

the overarcing problem with the entire project is that no-one is activly, legally in charge. The guy who was supposed to be resigned in abject frustration upon realising that he didn't have the power to actually tell anyone what to do - he could only ask them, nicely, and expect to be refused for 3 billion different reasons.

that most certainly is a flaw in the contract. It's also completely standard because these things are written by people with no thundering clue what the fuck they're doing.

there is an old addage among the upper echelons of government [and elsewhere] that "you don't have to understand it to manage it".
this is true. But is seriously freakin helps.

[nb. this is still better than the old Govt. style contract which paid out a percentage of total cost. That meaning the more the contractor spent the more you paid them. I'm still puzzled as to who thought that was in any way a good idea]

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

But that's the way the public sector works. Everything moves at a snail's pace and nobody is permitted to take any decisions because the whole process has to be seen as inclusive and consult every last individual on the planet before taking even the smallest decision.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

In my experience of managing large infrastructure projects for the private sector the contracting skills gap problem exists. If you are an occasssional buyer of special engineering or construction services they negotiator from the other side *always* knows more about the situation and the contract framework than you do. They are negotiating these contracts day in day out for an organisation that makes its living by negotiating these contracts.


One factor that makes the public sector seem worse at this than the private sector is that the public sector has to publish all the information about the financial performance of the project. The private sector doesn’t. Does anyone know how much the Harding gas field cost to develop? Anyone know what the original estimate was?

A genuine problem that the public sector has that equivalent sized private organisations don’t have is that the public sector has a limited ability to use its financial muscle. If you cross BP you will literally never work again. If you cross Edinburgh City Council you can happily tender for, say, a tram project in Birmingham next month.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know how much the Edinburgh tram project should have cost?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I don't know... but I'm wondering whether it is going to turn out better or worse than our Guided Bus catastrophe...

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Ladies!

If you are worried that your new boyfriend might be a closet case just introduce him to one of your ovulating friends!

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I still do think if they had done the trams in stages (such as doing the airport/Haymarket leg first), rather than tearing up the whole city on the offchance it would all be done at the same time was the height of stupidity :S

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Very pleased about the Stanford work on water splitting.

At an industrial scale hydrogen could be an economically useful energy store. Helpful smoothing supply for all of the variable renewables and also helpful for matching nuclear’s flat supply with spikey demand. All of which makes a considerable difference to the economics of both renewable and nuclear plant.

For example, I’ve seen some credible reports that suggest that, in some scenarios, the wholesale cost of electricity for slack demand periods could be negative i.e. you would be paid to take it, with peak demand prices at the £100’s to £1000’s per megawatthout. Quite a lot of value to be harnessed there.

My prefered energy storage mechanism is still liquid salt.

Or build some more interconnectors and store the surplus as money.

[andrewducker]

Molten salt seems to work well as a storage medium when it's already being used as part of a power plant. I wonder what the conversion efficiency would be if you were going electricity->heat->electricity.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Can't recall off the top of my head. IIRC it's okay, nearly good enough that it's economic at current prices & technology. There are papers on it, I'm sure I have some somewhere.

The required conversion efficiency with a peak price of circa £100 p megawatthour and an off peak price of £25 is 25%.

The technology is really useful for combined heat and power especially with district heat schemes.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

The total cost estimate to St Andrews Square is £770m.

Expenditure to date is £440m.

Therefore the marginal cost of getting from where we are (no tram)* to a tram is £330m.

Even if the cost to halt the project was nil the number to focus on is still the additional cost to complete the work and not the total cost.

*Although actually where we are is with all the utilities moved out from under our prefred tram route, so not a complete and utter waste.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely, no point getting caught up in the sunk cost fallacy.