Shipping Containers Coming To Fargate

[Planner1]

2 hours ago, Baron99 said:

the fact that nobody, (city planners again not doing their jobs communicating with the utility companies), noticed a major power cable had been removed from a major city centre street just across the road from the Town Hall / Planning Dept is a total & inept farce. 

I don’t think you understand the roles of the various organisations.

 

Councils do not keep records of buried service locations. That is the responsibility of the utility companies.

[Baron99]

16 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

I don’t think you understand the roles of the various organisations.

 

Councils do not keep records of buried service locations. That is the responsibility of the utility companies.

Silly me.  And here's me believing that its been standard practice in the city for years for utility companies et al, (except in emergencies), to have to apply for a licence prior to carrying out any road & pavement maintenance, such as digging great big holes in Fargate to remove a main electrical cable & explain in the licence application the nature of the work to be carried out. 

 

Farcical, not knowing an electrical supply had been moved with all the paperwork involved & paying for a supply, using council tax payers' money into the bargain for approximately 2 years. 

 

If there is some good to come out of this pantomime of errors then it's the fact council tax payers money isn't still being wasted on a non-existant supply.  God know how long we'd have been paying for it, if it hadn't come to light?  It could have been decades? 

[Meltman]

I'm absolutely amazed that no one in the city council or planning department knew about the large sewer (Don Valley catchment sewer  I think its called) passing under Fargate. It was a major construction when it was built, there was a celebration party in it for officials and construction team when it was finished.  There was some access places built in including in Fargate if I remember correctly, large 'manhole type ' covers in the road/pavement surface. I thought there was one near the top of Fargate near Surrey Street.  If I remember this why didn't the planning department know?

[Planner1]

59 minutes ago, Baron99 said:

Silly me.  And here's me believing that its been standard practice in the city for years for utility companies et al, (except in emergencies), to have to apply for a licence prior to carrying out any road & pavement maintenance, such as digging great big holes in Fargate to remove a main electrical cable & explain in the licence application the nature of the work to be carried out. 

The fact that the council issued a license to work doesn’t mean they have a record of where electrical cables are located.

 

The utilities keep those records. You would ask them if you wanted to know plant locations.

[hackey lad]

9 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

The fact that the council issued a license to work doesn’t mean they have a record of where electrical cables are located.

 

The utilities keep those records. You would ask them if you wanted to know plant locations.

Give over , it’s becoming tedious 

[Fredderick]

You’d be horrified at how many times the big utility companies don’t even know where their own infrastructure is in the ground, seriously. Or how often you pay for surveys that turn out to be wrong when you start construction.

 

I could forgive power cables etc but not the sewer in this case 

 

[Baron99]

7 hours ago, Planner1 said:

The fact that the council issued a license to work doesn’t mean they have a record of where electrical cables are located.

 

The utilities keep those records. You would ask them if you wanted to know plant locations.

My bold. 

 

Well clearly nobody did bother to ask, including it seems, Project Lead, Ben Brailsford or Ajman Ali, Executive Director of Operational Services. 

 

Quote from Mr Brailsford from BBC website, "There absolutely had to be some learning from this to make sure mistakes weren't repeated." 

 

Quote from Mr Ali, "We have learned several lessons from this project." 

 

The tired, old, well warn 'Lessons learned' cop out for not taking responsibility. 

 

Well what have we learned?  Sheffield planners / advisors are incompetent & it's quite easy to blow £600,000 of taxpayers money in a few weeks & have nothing to show for it, apart from 8 shipping containers. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Baron99

[Planner1]

8 hours ago, hackey lad said:

Give over , it’s becoming tedious 

If you don’t like facts, don’t read my posts.

[cuttsie]

8 hours ago, Planner1 said:

The fact that the council issued a license to work doesn’t mean they have a record of where electrical cables are located.

 

The utilities keep those records. You would ask them if you wanted to know plant locations.

Don’t they have a person who goes around with a little pogo stick , the pogo stick points at the  floor, if electric cable is there it screams  , Saw one this morning on Halifax road , or was it bloke with a coin detector in the middle of a a duel carriage way . 

Edited January 19, 2023 by cuttsie

[Planner1]

39 minutes ago, Baron99 said:

My bold. 

 

Well clearly nobody did bother to ask, including it seems, Project Lead, Ben Brailsford or Ajman Ali, Executive Director of Operational Services. 

 

Quote from Mr Brailsford from BBC website, "There absolutely had to be some learning from this to make sure mistakes weren't repeated." 

 

Quote from Mr Ali, "We have learned several lessons from this project." 

 

The tired, old, well warn 'Lessons learned' cop out for not taking responsibility. 

 

Well what have we learned?  Sheffield planners / advisors are incompetent & it's quite easy to blow £600,000 of taxpayers money in a few weeks & have nothing to show for it, apart from 8 shipping containers. 

From what was said earlier, it doesn’t appear to be normal practice to put in utilities enquiries for a temporary structure, where there isn’t going to be any excavation.

 

Certainly if I was doing the project I’d want to be assured that there wasn’t anything underground that we’d be restricting access to ( which I believe was the issue with the sewer)

 

We don’t know what enquiries were made, or surveys done, so it is pointless making assumptions.

 

As someone else pointed out, it is often the case that the utilities don’t have accurate records of where their plant is located, and when you do dig, it isn’t unusual to come across something that’s not on the utilities plans or isn’t where they think it is. 
 

Call me pedantic if you like but you and others keep referring to the SCC people leading this project as “planners”. They are not.
 

Mr Brailsford, who led the project is the Head of Parking Services and is covering the head of city centre management role too. His background is major events management like the Christmas Markets etc, so he’d be a good fit for a temporary development like this.

 

Recording learning points from things that don’t go too well for use on future projects is standard practice on any project these days, so you’d be disappointed if they didn’t mention it.

 

The installation was always going to be temporary, so at the end of it what else would you expect to have in terms of materials? Yes, £600k doesn’t buy you much these days.