Originally Posted by
peter we
The airport was built at a fixed price, I sugguest you read up on what they had to do before suggesting they built the runway last.
I think I've been involved with just one or two runway works to understand. Whenever they built it in the programme, it appears not to have been washed down before the first flight, and wasn't used to assist the overall construction of the remainder.
I am therefore well aware of the concept of "fixed price" for construction works. This will be for a definitive agreed design, but where the design specification is over the top in the first place, there you go. Even better is where the client specification is wrong, because notwithstanding fixed price, which was for fixed deliverables, any changes etc along the way and you are back to repricing. This is the skill of the contractor, to manage these items and increase the work content, because they are typically more profitable than the fixed price elements.
Yes there was a lot of muck shifting. On any civils project that is the more straightforward bit, for all that it looks impressive. Get the heavy plant in and on you go. I still believe there was the ability to "do an Easter Island" (a remarkably equivalent place for population, remoteness, etc) and have done a proper runway which could handle longer-haul aircraft for whom the distances would not be an issue.
As far as the so-elegant car parks and approach road scheme goes, which is like something connected to the M25, bear in mind that St Helena on the rest of the island has little in the way of roads beyond single lane-plus of simplistic construction, with a ramshackle small collection of third-hand cars imported from South Africa. They have no roadmaking plant, and asphalt is just imported in 20kg bags on the ship and laid cold and by hand with unskilled labour.