Invisible power lines

Christian Sciberras

Nov 30th 2011, 22:11

Just because Enemalta did a whole in the ground doesn't make it efficient.

Here's a tip, visit Switzerland to get a better meaning of efficiency.

Stanley Colombo

Nov 30th 2011, 08:59

If we take a square tunnel it's 3.4 x 3.4 x 1 = 11.56 cubic metres. 11.56 x 2,000 = EUR 23,120, not 173. If we take a circular tunnel at 3.4m diameter, that equates to 9.08 cubic metres @ 2,000 = EUR 18,160 per cubic metre, not 173.

WHY do we always have to include politics in the equation?

Charles Grima

Nov 30th 2011, 11:49

Boy is your calculator RED!!!

I suggest you retrace your steps....

Joseph Vassallo, (Bugibba)

Nov 30th 2011, 16:38

@ Stanley Colombo:

You are totally off-track and clueless, sir. You must have rushed into your comment.

First of all, this is not a circular tunnel but a square-sided vaulted one but since the vaulting is only shallow, for the sake of simplicity I calculated it as square.

If you take the section as being circular, as you stated yourself the volume of rock cut per metre of tunnel would be less (9.08 cubic metres) in which case, the cost per cubic metre would be higher still because €2,000 divided by 9.08 cubic metres of rock gives a product of €220.26 per cubic metre. At that rate, excavating 8m by 20 metres by 3.4 metres deep as I suggested in my example would mean that your garage level would cost you €119,821 (just for the rock cutting).

But as I said, the equation has been simplified because there is an element of access and disposal involved.

11.56 metres square multiplied by 1 metre give a product of 11.56 cubic metres. €2,000 is the cost of one metre of tunnel and therefore the cost of 11.56 cubic metres of rock cutting. You are meant to divide the cost by the volume to find the cost per cubic metre. €2,000 divided (NOT MULTIPLIED) by 11.56 cubic metres give the unit rate of €173.01 per cubic metre.

What is your current occupation, sir? I take it that you are not a quantity surveyor.

NOW! What did you do with the money your mother gave you for maths private lessons?


@ Charles Grima:

Where is it that you perceive political colour in my calculation?

They are simple calculations that any first-form pupil should be able to make.

What part or principle did you not understand? And you're telling me to retrace my steps? Really?

Can you at least substantiate your contention?

Joseph Vassallo, (Bugibba)

Nov 30th 2011, 17:06

@ Stanley Colombo and Charles Grima:

No apology necessary. Just "OOOPS!" will do.

Stanley Colombo

Feb 22nd, 11:22

Dear Mr. / Dr. / Prof. / Yr. Excellence / Yr. Highness Vassallo, as you may notice I am replying very quickly to your highly objective response - that shows that I give your comments tremendous importance.

I humbly admit that I made a mistake, yes. And my mistake was taking the €2,000 figure per metre CUBED instead of per metre.

You are completely right, I am NOT a quantity surveyor, I don't have the necessary I.Q. to even KNOW what that means so sorry if I wasted your precious time - of which thankfully you seem to dispose of in quite copious quantities.

When my poor mama used to send me to private lessons I used to squander all the money she used to earn from prostitution (but today she is a nun!) in cigarettes, drugs and women...what a criminal have I been! Please do not ask me what my profession is because I am too shy to proclaim it to you. It is however highly illegal so please keep this as a secret between you and I as I may easily get arrested - and then I could not feed my four ex-wives, current three girlfriends and eleven children - I am so responsible after all!

Joseph Vassallo, (Bugibba)

Feb 22nd, 14:05

Mr Colombo, I said... "No apologies necessary... just OOPS! will do."

Considering you turned a technical calculation into a party- political essay, I see no justification in you getting on your high horse and feeling offended because I joked about "skipping maths lessons". At the end of the day, you have to admit that you were jolly careless with your arithmetic (other than using Pi to calculate superficial area).

I did not mean to offend and sincerely apologise if I did; it is a joke often voiced when someone makes an honest mistake... we ask "What did you do with the money?"... "What money?"... "The money your mama gave you for lessons." I wasn't to know that you were unfamiliar with it. You'll probably have occasion to use it yourself, now you are familiar with it. I reiterate that no offence was intended because next time I could be on the receiving end.

BUT... I am amazed by something else however... your comment is dated TODAY AT 11:20 even though my comment was made last November... yet here I am looking up a long-forgotten post and finding your comment.

Is the date correct? Judging by the assumed sarcasm about "giving your comments tremendous importance" I'm thinking it must be.

So, is my visit here coincidence? Or are we telepathic?

I respectfully offer to shake your hand sir and I am not a professor... just a retired working man who knew his job of pricing artificers' work and who gives everybody's comments tremendous importance.

My original point remains that this rock-cutting is costing YOU AND ME more than it should, because Enemalta will be adding it to our bills, sooner rather than later.

Stanley Colombo

Feb 22nd, 15:10

Dear Joseph,

whatever you are, retired, professor, layman - point remains you were correct to the last number and I did make a mistake. To be honest I thought your comments were downright arrogant - especially since you marketed yourself such a smart Alec. Today you have shown you can be still smart but at teh same time also a very nice guy - which warrants an adequate reply from my side. You played fair by apologizing and I am doing the same - but I assure you that no offence was taken in the first place - my self-esteem has withstood much worse treatment, and then, only made stronger.

The date lag is due to the fact that I had forgotten about all this and also never intended to reply, but when you reminded me of this again by pasting this link in another post of mine (again in such an arrogant way) completely unrelated to this one I thought you were pushing it too far - that gave me three choices - ignore you once and for all and risk another arrogant instigation, send my intelligence to hell and hail you with a ton of insults which would be mediated anyway, or post you a super-sarcastic but auto-critic reply which was bound to catch your attention - boy did I choose the best of the three :)

It seems then that out of your options the telepathic one is the more applicable :)

I respectfully and humbly accept your handshake offer - and re-iterate that whatever you were you seem to have known your job big time and your eventual successor had one hell of a reputation to live up to.

Now to the actual point - even here you couldn't be more correct in my opinion. But I wish to add that at least these tunnels can be more justified than the colossal inefficiencies retraceable to this monster of a company.

I may not have said a lot but I think reconciling (if that were ever needed) two gentlemen like you and I is certainly more important - after all we will still end up paying for others' inefficiencies, whether we fight over a miscalculation or not.

Hats off to you again Joseph - I hope your retirement was of epic prorportions. If all your contributions are as sterling as this one you are giving a very valuable contribution to the country and we younger ones have much to learn from people like you.

Joseph Vassallo, (Bugibba)

Feb 22nd, 19:07

Hello again Stanley,

I am concerned that I came across as arrogant because my intention would at best (or worst) have been to be provocative wishing to elicit an engaging expansion of thoughts. You seem to have a very strong opinion which of course I would defend your right to have; similarly your thoughts on my coming across as a wannabe "smart Alec".

I can’t think which arrogant post (link) you are referring to though, but I do like an intelligent debate (argument even). Today I linked my post here to my comment on the MT bribery case (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120222/local/two-arraigned-in-road-works-bribery-case.408000) but can’t see anything arrogant in what I said there. Unfortunately, the moderators removed my opening paragraphs, not because they were arrogant but seemingly, because they don’t understand the contentiousness and implications. To be honest, I recently stopped commenting on this board because I felt that some hidden agenda was making the moderators dump my posts. I put in an honest effort into my comments and will research the subject just to be sure that I have not become confused and dimential, now that I’m waiting for god; but having done that, I don’t like to see my post binned because it criticises (or puts in a bad light) some politician or reporter held in high regard.

When I said, in my original reply, that you were off-track and clueless, I felt you were mitigated by having had to rush your reply (tempus fugit etc) and I said so in the same sentence. I certainly didn’t mean that you come across as incapable of distinguishing between multiplication and division. That was my quip, as in witticism rather than a derisive or contemptuous retort. When I said I assumed you are not a quantity surveyor, it was to let you know that pricing civil engineering works is a specialist profession (A.R.I.C.S. affiliates) so there is no need to feel humbled by mistakes we can both make.

Sometimes it is difficult, if not even impossible, to convey an intended tone via the written word; my apologies for any misunderstanding I may have caused. I try to write primarily on things I consider I have some knowledge about and secondarily, with an open mind to opposition and a leaning to tongue-in-cheek humour (remember the “what did you do with the money” thing? Sadly, it seems I don't always deliver my aspirations satisfactorily.

I hasten to reassure you that I am no pretentious academic whose only vehicle at work was a desk. I grew up on building sites and learned my trades by (sometimes-harsh) experience. Please consider that I come from an era when we projected profits in fractions of an old penny per unit when tendering for artificers works. We had no computers then; pricing, casting and extending were done on fingers and toes (so to speak) and meant sleepless nights checking for arithmetical errors. Sixteen and twenty-hour days, to hit a tender deadline, were normal because we had a day-job to do as well.

The British Standard Method of Measurement (BSMM was used by UK government) is very demanding and each trade had to be priced separately on dedicated bills of quantities. One day per week was set aside for site meetings with quantity surveyors to measure completed work, in order to claim interim payments. I couldn’t believe that local architects measured PWD contracts in lump sums off the top of their heads and without deducting openings whether they were building walls or painting them.

Sometimes we took risks in order to secure a contract and we lost instead of earned; the risks were justified because without them, our workers (all breadwinners) lost out. Competition was heavy and contracts few, especially when the UK government started running down its military presence in Malta.

We priced “rock cutting with hand-picks (bqaqen) or compressor”, at about one euro a cubic yard. You will now understand better why I find €200 per cubic metre scandalously incomprehensible, despite the specific limitations. Hopefully, this explains why I felt outraged by the report and went into retro-mode for a top-of-head assessment. Someone is making millions at the taxpayers’ expense; lucrative contracts like these do not just happen.

Enemalta, as you rightly say, is a monster. We were told only recently, that it means to recoup its long-term losses over the immediate short-term future. Until recently, we received a “subsidy” on water and electricity consumed in our homes but these were written down as losses in the Enemalta/WSC accounts. As such, they will be recovered within the new pricing structure for utilities being levied now. This means that we will be paying back to Enemalta/WSC ALL the subsidies of previous years up to heaven knows when. If I am understanding this correctly, the “subsidy” was not a subsidy at all but a deferral of payment. No one has been forthcoming with a reassurance that I am wrong. So... What are we to think?

As you can see, I am totally incapable of writing one-line comments so, I’ll thank you for your thoughts and for accepting my apology and my hand in friendship. I hope others who happen by this exchange find it of interest and possibly gain something from it.

Sincerely.

George Smith

Nov 29th 2011, 14:29

I agree ...

C Cassar

Nov 29th 2011, 19:00

where is the money going to come from? The EU won't make a contribution because it's not a critical requirement for an island the size of Malta since there are'nt the passenger volumes to make such a system cost effective.

Forget the idea, a bus network is sufficient for the size of the Maltese islands.

Mr Peter Korsten

Nov 29th 2011, 21:39

See my comment below. A metro system for Malta would easily cost €10,000,000,000. That's ten billion.

For the record, I love rail transport and particularly urban heavy rail, but an underground railway for Malta is simply not feasible.

Andre Cilia

Nov 29th 2011, 12:18

He who does something is he who gets things wrong.

JC Sullivan

Nov 29th 2011, 17:12

"It's better to have tried and failed, than no to have tried at all."

and my own quote... S/he who does nothing is part of the problem.

John Vella

Nov 29th 2011, 11:50

Mr Briffa. Hidden? Not in Fgura. We had a collapsed road. Another road was closed for nearly a year. And part of Wied Blandun ruined. And there is one street near Wied Blandun its like a third word country.
Having said that we need a metro system which can be partly financed by EU. Mr Anglu Xuereb once proposed a metro from Paola to Valletta to Sliema and stops in Paceville I wonder why it was never commissioned. With A Metro going to Paola to paceville will take less than one minute. Such transport is fast, economical and cheap to run.

Mr Peter Korsten

Nov 29th 2011, 11:54

Let's see... €2000 per metre for a tunnel that would barely fit one train. A more realistic cost would be €10,000 per metre, or €10 million per kilometre. We'd need at least 30 km of tunnels (Enemalta has already over 30 km), so at least €300 million. And that's just digging, not the lining, emergency escapes, station buildings, tracks, safety systems, depots, trains of corse and what else. So we're looking at least at €1 billion, with a government debt of €6 billion. And this is a very conservative estimate: Amsterdam is building a 9.7 km subway line, of which 3.8 km is underground, at a cost of (for now) €3.1 billion, more than twice over budget. So a subway system for Malta could easily cost €10 billion.

Where is the money going to come from?

Jonathan Scerri

Nov 29th 2011, 11:20

Yes, technical. Physical cable separation.

Frans van Avendonk

Nov 29th 2011, 11:28

What about the van! Or do you expect them to walk? Do not forget they are Maltese workers...

Franco Ebejer

Nov 29th 2011, 12:47

Dawn sa fejn naf jien mhux l-inglizi kienu bdew ihafruwom, jekk miniex sejjer zball!!! Ghax milli rajt fil video hu f'certu postijiet fejn ghandom il ventijiet ta l-arja....il Maltin anqas biss kapaci jzommuwom naqra nodfa u sura ta niex, u rwejjah ta gas jew zejt hierga mil vent tal arja li hemm rahal gdid....kollox jillikja!!!

B Ellul

Nov 29th 2011, 12:51

Frans

I think that everyone (not only Maltese workers) will need transport.... we're talking about KM here to go from one place to another....

Daniel Gaffarena

Nov 29th 2011, 10:44

It was probably the one that passes to Matre Dei Hospital

Reinhard Azzopardi

Nov 29th 2011, 12:56

When was this? During the mid 90s?

Tony Stivala

Nov 29th 2011, 11:31

In Gozo I can nearly reach the cables passing through my balcony, and I am only 5'5". This is because, as years went by they sagged so much and have become dangerous in my opinion, but of course the people from Enemalta or eneGozo, declared they are safe enough

Karl Abela

Nov 29th 2011, 10:37

Such a feasibility study was carried out by the ministry of Austin Gatt (the man you all love to hate, and who actually does something right), and it was concluded that the cheapest form of underground rail transport is only feasible with a population of 5 million inhabitants.

An underground round network is even more impossible because this requires alot more space especially for entrance and exit points.

Mr Alex Phillips

Nov 29th 2011, 11:05

This has been going on in Australia since 1974. Hardly "new technology" guys!

Mr Duncan Scerri

Nov 29th 2011, 11:29

@Karl Abela

"Rennes has... a metro line that was inaugurated in March 2002 and cost €500 million to build. The driverless Rennes Metro (VAL) is 9.4 km (5.8 mi) in length and has 15 stations, including one designed by architect Norman Foster (La Poterie station)."

Population: 206,655.

Brescia (population: 197,250) and Lausanne (population: 125,885) also have metro systems.

You might also care to take a look at "Dorfbahn Serfaus".

Wally Vella-Zarb

Nov 29th 2011, 11:40

Who said that it was "new technology"?

Mr Michel Ellul

Nov 29th 2011, 10:37

you read my mind, but we are no experts, we are just joe public. The so called experts didn't want to build a simple pedestrian bridge over mriehel bypass, do you think that are going to build a subway....we are blind, we do not have vision.