Two BILLION OVER budget? Two thousand million? That can't be right!? How much was the project supposed to cost at the point the plans were finalised? Surely it should be 2 million.
It went from a initial estimate of $3 Billion up to a projected $5 Billion now.
It went from a initial estimate of $3 Billion up to a projected $5 Billion now.
5 billion is insane for an office / campus.
On the other hand, Dutch government here tried to built an high-speed train between Amsterdam and Brussels and we taxpayers lost 8-12 billion euros on that.
I remember reading this story a couple of months ago and then it was revealed that Sanska only had the contract for the outer shell anyway, with R&S doing the interiors.
Also, I've never read a single story (and I follow this closely as an architect) that said that move in would be this year.
Also, the project was reported to be 2 billion over the original estimate before construction began, due to design changes, something I never understood since Steve, the main driver behind such extremely expensive details as walls being polished to a gloss and curving to meet floors, was already gone.
Remember the original architect hired by Steve? Not an engineer. Brilliant concept without a road map. The likes of this building has never been built before... Cost over runs? Time delays? Whose fault is it? Unfortunately a big problem from the very beginning.. The seeds were sown. Apple can throw a tantrum, but this should not be a surprise.
Remember the original architect hired by Steve? Not an engineer. Brilliant concept without a road map. The likes of this building has never been built before... Cost over runs? Time delays? Whose fault is it? Unfortunately a big problem from the very beginning.. The seeds were sown. Apple can throw a tantrum, but this should not be a surprise.
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
I doubt that construction crews are normally up to the quality demands of a company like Apple.
Exactly.. I'm getting visions of the movie Elysium btw. Maybe the Apple HQ will rise up one day to be space design, so Jony and Tim can rule us from above.
Consider a tiny old house in the area costs a cool million, and they're building a state-of-the-art ginormous space ship office, designed by the best in the world. It's probably more than 2 million bucks for a few feet of those glass walls.
I'm sure property costs are stratospheric, and that the cost of the spaceship once the plans were finalised, inclusive of all materials and services charges, was stratospsheric. But surely, once the final plans were fixed in stone, along with main contractors' awarded quotes which are based on subcontractor awarded quotes, from THAT point the costs can't have escalated by two thousand million.
An underestimate by that amount is indicative of staggering incompetence. Surely the two billion difference - if accurate - is a comparison between a very early preliminary estimate long before final awards for supply of materials and services and the initial spade in the dirt.
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
Not true... In the U.S. architects are required to provide the engineering guidelines for construction... In the UK architecture is merely conceptual... Check it out.
Skanska was responsible for the design (Steve Jobs wanted them for the job), but Skanska was about one year behind in some aspects of the design (which may be do to changes made by Apple). There was no way the other contractors could do their job without the design being finished.
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
Not true... In the U.S. architects are required to provide the engineering guidelines for construction... In the UK architecture is merely conceptual... Check it out.
Whaa?? No they're not.
Stop talking. You're just making a bigger fool of yourself.
Obviously there's a lot of questions about this and most will probably never be answered, although I suppose Apple will have to say something about it in their annual report.
When AI posted the last video of the construction progress, I thought to myself that there was no way they were completing within 2016, but then I thought that since the panels were built off-site, construction might be very quick once the foundation was in place.
Did specs really change on the exterior shell? That's a bit hard to believe that wasn't settled up front.
$2 billion is an incredibly large cost overrun at this stage, if accurate. But I give Apple credit for firing the main contractor. That takes a lot of guts. Let's say the cost overrun has nothing to do with materials costs, but with extra time/labor. If the building takes a year extra, working 6 days a week and there's 1000 workers involved, that works out to over $6400 per worker per working day. Since that's impossible, you have to think that the panels or other structural elements are costing twice as much to manufacture as originally intended.
I forget how many employees Apple intends to house in that building, but let's say the building costs $5 billion and houses 8000 employees and the construction cost is written off over 20 years. That's still over $31,000 per employee for the construction costs (not including ongoing maintenance). That's a lot! My bet is that Apple eventually sells the building to an Apple "real-estate" company and then leases the building back. There are apparently some tax advantages to doing this.
If the campus really is going to cost $5 billion, that's more than the construction cost for One World Trade Center, which I think will hold 25,000 employees and is over 100 stories high. It's hard to imagine how that can possibly be considering how all projects in NYC have huge cost overruns and the cost of building in NYC is so high.
You joke, but this actually happened to me. "Welcome to your renovated office. See that pile of Ikea boxes in the middle of the room? Claim your stuff and build it." They even made a video of it.
Exactly.. I'm getting visions of the movie Elysium btw. Maybe the Apple HQ will rise up one day to be space design, so Jony and Tim can rule us from above.
Perhaps the contract was signed during Mercury Retrograde?
Whaa?? No they're not.
Stop talking. You're just making a bigger fool of yourself.
Of course they're not. Architects are responsible for the architectural design and engineers are responsible for the engineering. (See how that works?)?
And Skanska was never hired to do the design. That job went to Lord Norman Foster, one of the world's leading architect and one who has done projects much larger than this.
Comments
Two BILLION OVER budget? Two thousand million? That can't be right!? How much was the project supposed to cost at the point the plans were finalised? Surely it should be 2 million.
It went from a initial estimate of $3 Billion up to a projected $5 Billion now.
It went from a initial estimate of $3 Billion up to a projected $5 Billion now.
5 billion is insane for an office / campus.
On the other hand, Dutch government here tried to built an high-speed train between Amsterdam and Brussels and we taxpayers lost 8-12 billion euros on that.
Also, I've never read a single story (and I follow this closely as an architect) that said that move in would be this year.
Also, the project was reported to be 2 billion over the original estimate before construction began, due to design changes, something I never understood since Steve, the main driver behind such extremely expensive details as walls being polished to a gloss and curving to meet floors, was already gone.
Speculations posing as "journalism" again?
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
I doubt that construction crews are normally up to the quality demands of a company like Apple.
Exactly.. I'm getting visions of the movie Elysium btw. Maybe the Apple HQ will rise up one day to be space design, so Jony and Tim can rule us from above.
Consider a tiny old house in the area costs a cool million, and they're building a state-of-the-art ginormous space ship office, designed by the best in the world. It's probably more than 2 million bucks for a few feet of those glass walls.
I'm sure property costs are stratospheric, and that the cost of the spaceship once the plans were finalised, inclusive of all materials and services charges, was stratospsheric. But surely, once the final plans were fixed in stone, along with main contractors' awarded quotes which are based on subcontractor awarded quotes, from THAT point the costs can't have escalated by two thousand million.
An underestimate by that amount is indicative of staggering incompetence. Surely the two billion difference - if accurate - is a comparison between a very early preliminary estimate long before final awards for supply of materials and services and the initial spade in the dirt.
Not true... In the U.S. architects are required to provide the engineering guidelines for construction... In the UK architecture is merely conceptual... Check it out.
What's 2 billion $$$ anyway...a years property tax?
" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
what on earth? architects are architects, thats their job, not construction. can you provide some facts that back up your claim that the architect they hired is responsible for the construction problems? or that apple is "throwing a tantrum"? no, i dont think so. looks to me youre just another guy jumping to conclusions.
Not true... In the U.S. architects are required to provide the engineering guidelines for construction... In the UK architecture is merely conceptual... Check it out.
Whaa?? No they're not.
Stop talking. You're just making a bigger fool of yourself.
Obviously there's a lot of questions about this and most will probably never be answered, although I suppose Apple will have to say something about it in their annual report.
When AI posted the last video of the construction progress, I thought to myself that there was no way they were completing within 2016, but then I thought that since the panels were built off-site, construction might be very quick once the foundation was in place.
Did specs really change on the exterior shell? That's a bit hard to believe that wasn't settled up front.
$2 billion is an incredibly large cost overrun at this stage, if accurate. But I give Apple credit for firing the main contractor. That takes a lot of guts. Let's say the cost overrun has nothing to do with materials costs, but with extra time/labor. If the building takes a year extra, working 6 days a week and there's 1000 workers involved, that works out to over $6400 per worker per working day. Since that's impossible, you have to think that the panels or other structural elements are costing twice as much to manufacture as originally intended.
I forget how many employees Apple intends to house in that building, but let's say the building costs $5 billion and houses 8000 employees and the construction cost is written off over 20 years. That's still over $31,000 per employee for the construction costs (not including ongoing maintenance). That's a lot! My bet is that Apple eventually sells the building to an Apple "real-estate" company and then leases the building back. There are apparently some tax advantages to doing this.
If the campus really is going to cost $5 billion, that's more than the construction cost for One World Trade Center, which I think will hold 25,000 employees and is over 100 stories high. It's hard to imagine how that can possibly be considering how all projects in NYC have huge cost overruns and the cost of building in NYC is so high.
You joke, but this actually happened to me. "Welcome to your renovated office. See that pile of Ikea boxes in the middle of the room? Claim your stuff and build it." They even made a video of it.
I saw you in the video! Very cool ...
No sit/stand desks?
Constructiongate
Oh God , please go away, the .... gates are meaningless empty phrases now
Exactly.. I'm getting visions of the movie Elysium btw. Maybe the Apple HQ will rise up one day to be space design, so Jony and Tim can rule us from above.
Perhaps the contract was signed during Mercury Retrograde?
For this year
2015 Retrograde Dates
In 2015, Mercury will be retrograde during:
Hope they didnt sign the new deal before tomorrow
Of course they're not. Architects are responsible for the architectural design and engineers are responsible for the engineering. (See how that works?)?
And Skanska was never hired to do the design. That job went to Lord Norman Foster, one of the world's leading architect and one who has done projects much larger than this.