Originally Posted by
Broken Biscuits
I was taught on the first day of my engineering course "an engineer does for 19s 6d what anyone can do for 21s" (you can tell it was quite a number of years ago!). Shelco applied that principle whereas what has been built uses the "money no object" principle typical of many public projects.
You are quite right about the engineers, but this disregards the commercial side of designers and contractors, who are meanwhile looking for the maximum, not minimum, revenue they can charge the client. Of course, they then harass the engineer to achieve minimum construction cost for it.
Broadly speaking, contractors look to make 5-10% margin on contracts, so if they can get something designed that's twice the effort of a feasible solution, that's twice the margin. So contrary to the opinions of some, contractors are always looking for the maximum they can charge for a project, not the competitive minimum.
By the way, I understood that the Americans have vetoed the idea of the Ascension runway
Can someone point out to "the Americans" that Ascension Island, like St Helena, is a British Overseas territory.