A conspiracy or a stuff up

I am told about a memo from the SA Health Dept to Department Heads that says that the proposed railyards hospital is tgo be 8 storeys.            When South Australians expressed concern about the proposal before the March election, the published concept drawings were a 3 storey building so that the view to the North  from North Terrace would be unsullied.   The Government assured us that the concept was firm and 3 storeys it would be!

Consider the practicalities.
(1)   On Frome Rd, the T shaped building known as the North Wing was designed in the late 1960's to have  3 wards on each floor each holding 30 patients = 90 patients with 6 occupied floors.  That's a capacity of 500 patients and its footprint would be about 1ha.        The proposed hospital is to have more beds than that in a modern layout .    Single rooms, each occupies at least 4x the space of a bed  so the area required would be 4 x the present size.    If 500 beds on 6 floors take up 1ha then 4x the space would be 4ha , over half the height means the space would be extended to 8ha.     The proposed plan is for 700 beds so they said, adding  more space and we have 10ha required for bed space alone!    This is without any treatment areas  - theatres, Xray, clinics, laboratories .     On the Frome Rd site, the Treatment areas are about the same area as the "hotel "space so on this simple logic the proposal at 3 storeys should be 20ha which then leads to another set of questions.
(2)     A problem in modern complex medical treatment  facilities is the distance patients have to traverse or be wheeled between clinics.    It can be done but, the walking patients need a guide, or orderlies wheel the bedfast/chairfast.      Over a 20ha (or to be kind a 10ha treatment only portion) site the traversing time is longer.    There is insufficient staff to manage this aspect at Frome Rd,  how many more staff would be required on the Railyards, and all of this in a financial climate where the Department is looking to SAVE ie REDUCE expenditure by $450m every year.    
(3)     The concept drawings published before the election showed a building with lots of glass.  It is high school physics that the amount of heat transfer (losing in winter, gaining in summer) is proportional to the surface area exposed.    This large spread out building maximises the heat transfer    Any such heat loss/gain is managed by the air conditioning systems which use energy which we know is costing us more and more. (just look at your Electricity bill next month. )    One way of reducing the problem is to reduce the surface area exposed, that can be done by condensing the building ie having a higher building with a smaller footprint.   Is this where the 8 storey concept story has come from?     But that would give a lie to the promises preelection.      Logic (of which there seems to be little) says that with all the expertise on this project the Government, the Dept of Health would have known all this at the planning concept stage.     
The only explanantions available are (a) a conspiracy, or (b) a stuff up.     My money is on a stuff up because a conspiracy takes vision, organisation, discipline, cooperation and nerve.     None of those qualities have been demonstrated in this saga.

SAVE THE RAH BACK IS BACK IN BUSINESS

The sleight of hand that transferred the cost of the proposed railways RAH from the State to the Commonwealth has placed the decisionmaking about the project squarely in the lap of whatever government is formed in Canberra.       That means that the influence of the Greens will be crucial.

An article in the Advertiser on 18th August (P16) raised the spectre of the huge cost of remediation of the site following more than 100 years of industrial spillage from abbatoirs, tannery and railways.    Presuming the facts have just come to light it ignored the fact that the Save the RAH Committee before the March election tried to interest anyone in the information provided from the drill cores but no one was willing to respond. 

We know that the contamination is extensive over the whole site, that it extends to a depth of about 10-15m where the clay layer has prevented it from soaking deeper.     The proposed hospital footprint of 2-3Ha means that the volume of soil that has to be removed is millions of cubic metres which not only has to be removed but treated as well.      On the Desalination Plant site about the same size, the cost I am told, is $200million. Is this kind of figure is  part of the $1.7billion hospital pricetag.?      If yes, then why bother when the restoration of the Frome Rd site woulc cost less,   If no, then the Adelaide Oval debacle is cheap by comparison.

Tenderers are seeking cheaper alternatives but any compromise (like one in India where the new hospital was built on a sheet of plastic!) leaves contaminated soil which under the weight of the new building contaminates will be squeezed out onto the clay layer and end up in the Torrens and from there to the coast.

Which brings us to the Federal sphere.    The significant vote for the Greens is claimed as the result of widespread public concern for environmental issues.      Now that the Greens have such a powerful voice in Caanberra will they veto this expensive , unnecessary and polluting development.     Tony Abbott said that a vote for Greens is a vote for Labor.    Is he right?  or will the Greens stand up for their environmental credentials in this matter.   Will the real Greens please stand up