MTA Elevator Installations Come With Controversity

[Deucey]

9 minutes ago, R68OnBroadway said:

I doubt a consultant would say anything but something obvious. I think MTA should just try and hire in-house workers instead as they can then neogatiate pay contracts themselves and they can also fire and replace workers who refuse to do their jobs or just stand around.

I always wondered why never created its own construction team when it created it's own in-house fabricators to do smelting and stuff for subway parts.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

30 minutes ago, Deucey said:

I always wondered why never created its own construction team when it created it's own in-house fabricators to do smelting and stuff for subway parts.

Likely they think the costs are prohibitive.  Remember their in-house folks are union... $$$ With construction it's a cycle.  Some of the guys working literally are laid off once a job is completed as they are not employees, but contractors, so they earn well in terms of pay, but likely have far less benefits overall thus making them cheaper. In my old company, when there weren't jobs coming in, sometimes laborers had to be laid off.  Office folks like myself were safe because we had enough work in general to keep us busy, but even then some people were let go.  

The overall structure is project managers bill their hours to a job, and if they don't have anything to bill them to, well you know what happens. For the short time that I was a PM in the field with another company, I would submit my hours to whatever jobs I was on and that's how I was paid even though I was an employee and not a contractor because our salaries are too expensive otherwise.  I'm technically a PM now but I run my own department which sort of spares me from getting the axe when business is a bit slow.

For laborers it can be even worse as they generally aren't working on multiple jobs like project managers are.

[Porter]

There needs to be an oversight committee for these contractors. We need a third party to say "you hired too many workers for a job that doesn't need that many" and "this much must be completed by this date or else your pay will halve every week of delay until we cancel your contract."

[Via Garibaldi 8]

7 minutes ago, Porter said:

There needs to be an oversight committee for these contractors. We need a third party to say "you hired too many workers for a job that doesn't need that many" and "this much must be completed by this date or else your pay will halve every week of delay until we cancel your contract."

Well most of these contracts do have penalties for being late, (as far as I know), but sometimes it's the incompetence of the  that leads to these delays. If you're going to have tons of change orders, well that's going to push the project back and you can't fault the contractor for that. Sometimes the  may be aware of the problems via the contractor, but forges ahead anyway. It's like the South Ferry station.  Apparently the  and the contractor knew about the water issues well in advance, but could never mitigate them during the project, which in part delayed the project among other things.  You can hold the contractor responsible to some degree, but it's the  that is the customer, and ultimately makes the decision to accept certain things.

They also use the cheapest materials possible, which means that no matter how good of a job the contractor does, the work eventually looks shoddy.  I got off at 77th street a few weeks ago and noticed that the tiles were coming down.  Well why is that? The  decided to take a cheap approach and instead of getting all of the old tiling down, they simply tiled over them.  Surely they thought this would cut down on costs (less demolition needed) and time (again less time spent, less money), but if there were issues underneath the tiles (water problems, etc.), you don't find out about them by tiling over them.

[Deucey]

28 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Well most of these contracts do have penalties for being late, (as far as I know), but sometimes it's the incompetence of the  that leads to these delays. If you're going to have tons of change orders, well that's going to push the project back and you can't fault the contractor for that. Sometimes the  may be aware of the problems via the contractor, but forges ahead anyway. It's like the South Ferry station.  Apparently the  and the contractor knew about the water issues well in advance, but could never mitigate them during the project, which in part delayed the project among other things.  You can hold the contractor responsible to some degree, but it's the  that is the customer, and ultimately makes the decision to accept certain things.

They also use the cheapest materials possible, which means that no matter how good of a job the contractor does, the work eventually looks shoddy.  I got off at 77th street a few weeks ago and noticed that the tiles were coming down.  Well why is that? The  decided to take a cheap approach and instead of getting all of the old tiling down, they simply tiled over them.  Surely they thought this would cut down on costs (less demolition needed) and time (again less time spent, less money), but if there were issues underneath the tiles (water problems, etc.), you don't find out about them by tiling over them.

I truly think that if someone in in charge of construction watched HGTV for a week, they'd realize how stupidly they've handled construction for decades.

But then we could end up with Travertine subway platforms and electric fireplaces on next to fare gates...

[Deucey]

1 hour ago, Deucey said:

I truly think that if someone in in charge of construction watched HGTV for a week, they'd realize how stupidly they've handled construction for decades.

But then we could end up with Travertine subway platforms and electric fireplaces on next to fare gates...

Not gonna lie, I'd be okay with getting rid of tile walls for shiplap

.

[bobtehpanda]

6 hours ago, Deucey said:

I always wondered why never created its own construction team when it created it's own in-house fabricators to do smelting and stuff for subway parts.

If you read up on how Vignelli and the MTA sign shops first interacted, there's a good reason why the MTA tries not to do in-house anymore.

TL;DR everything the MTA does becomes a self-important silo where things have to be done the way they've always been done because that's just how it works. At least in private industry, theoretically anyone subscribing to this belief too hard gets bankrupt. The only issue with construction is that it's an old boys' club where everyone refuses to play by the modern rules of industry, and they can do so because the MTA is not about to try getting visas for a bunch of top-of-the-line foreign construction workers.