The Anonymous Widower

Building Council Flats In London

I was told this tale by the Head of the Construction Branch of the Greater London Council, who was a big user of the first Project Management System;PERT7, that I wrote in the 1970s.

The GLC were building some council flats alongside the railway.

There were four parallel blocks with five floors and I’ll number them 1 to 4, with 4 alongside the railway and 1 furthest away.

The plan to build them involved the following.

• Deliveries were planned, so that the many residents around the site and British Rail were not inconvenienced.
• Site access was arranged with British Rail along the railway on a track to and from a major road a few hundred yards away.
• The site would be cleared with all the rubble going out in the reverse direction.
• The plan then was to build the blocks 1, 2, 3 and 4 towards the railway.
• This was logical, as when each block was completed it could be occupied and the new tenants wouldn’t be living in a building site, as what needed to be done was towards the railway.

But he was overruled by a vociferous local lobby and some local politicians, who had convinced themselves that building away from the railway in a 4, 3, 2, 1 order would be better.

In the end they were built in the 4, 3, 2, 1 order with budget and time overruns and endless complaints from residents.

If there is a lesson from this fairly insignificant project, it is that in a construction project, there is often one way to build it, that minimises construction time and disturbance to neighbours and maximises the cash flow from the development.

August 22, 2021 - Posted by AnonW | Computing, Design, World | Construction, Greater London Council, London, Politics, Project Management