A Clue is need to repatriate Saudi Funds.
He emerged from his unexpected and unwanted seclusion looking thinner than before and rather more grey and describing the entire ordeal as if it were business as usual, another day at the office. The sequestration of prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, grandson of Ibn Saud the founder of Saudi Arabia, continues meanwhile to raise more questions than it did answers.
Feb 14, 2018 - The construction union, E tū says it is working to clarify the effect of Fletcher Building and Interiors’ huge loss on its members at Fletchers.
“We’re still coming to terms with the fact that the country’s biggest building company is no longer bidding for new commercial projects, which is just extraordinary,” says Ron Angel, E tū’s Industry Coordinator for Engineering and Infrastructure.
“We’re trying to find out what happens next, but we will have members affected by this – though it’s currently unclear how many,” he says.
Ron says union organisers had visited Fletcher sites in Christchurch this morning, where members had been told to expect closure once work is finished on company projects including the city’s Justice and Emergency Services Precinct.
“Our immediate focus is to protect our members’ interests. We hope if there are redundancies our members can be redeployed in other Fletcher divisions. Some will be entitled to redundancy pay, but others won’t,” says Ron.
Ron says E tū has also spoken with members about the factors behind the near-billion dollar losses.
“In part, this is a result of too many people in head office doing the paperwork and pushing up overheads, and too few people on the ground doing the work,” says Ron.
He says a lack of experience in project management also meant a lot of mistakes, especially on the Justice precinct project.
“Our members have told us that 50 percent of that project was built twice.
“The workers say they’d put stuff up and a week later they’d be pulling it down again because the design changed or there were design faults, cracked tiles and the like. And there was too little supervision, with no one taking responsibility for the quality of the work.”
Poor cost control had also been flagged by the division’s Chair, Sir Ralph Norris, who has resigned.
Ron says Fletchers’ losses are “a salutary indictment of the sub-contracting model which is killing the construction industry in New Zealand.
“It means Fletchers has been unable to control costs and quality on these big projects and the result is just gobsmacking.”
| An E tū release || February 14, 2018 |||
Feb 14, 2018 - Environmental organisation WWF-New Zealand is deeply concerned by suggestions from the new Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash that he might “scrap” plans to put cameras on fishing boats.
Feb 14, 2018 - Global design firm Stantec is strengthening its New Zealand and Australia-based capabilities with the planned acquisition of Wellington, New Zealand-based consulting transportation engineering firm, Traffic Design Group (TDG). With more than 80 team members, TDG has offices located in markets throughout New Zealand, including Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, Napier, Wellington, Nelson, and Christchurch. The firm also has an office in Sydney, Australia. The transaction is expected to close April 1.
feb 14, 2018 - Plant & Food Research is proud to be the recipient of this year’s Prime Minister’s Science Prize for its rapid response to the vine-killing kiwifruit disease Psa.
Feb 14, 2018 - When is a skip-loader of no use? The answer? When you need a hooklift truck instead. Now skiptruck and hookloader manufacturer Harsh has an answer – a demountable skiploader!
The demountable skiploader unit developed by Harsh based on the requirements of specific customer demand, is designed to fit onto a chassis fitted with a conventional hook- lift system (Ro-Ro/hookloader), which in effect doubles its capability, enabling one single truck to load and transport containers from these two popular, but otherwise incompatible systems.
“We can run a single vehicle as a standard hookloader for one journey, then quickly change it to a skiploader for the next job,” explains Freddy McAlister, fleet engineer at Malcolm Construction, the operator of this interesting new innovation.
“In the past, we’ve had to operate both types of truck – sometimes on the same con- tract. Now we only need one to handle both types of container. It’s given us a real productivity boost and increased our fleet flexibility,” he adds.
Designed to work at 26 tonnes gross weight, the new Harsh ‘HS14T Demountable Skiploader’ provides a 14 tonnes lift capacity (or 10 tonnes at 4250 mm maximum reach with telescopic arms extended) and is able to handle skips of all sizes up to 10 tonnes capacity.
Harsh director Adam Hargreaves is also upbeat about the wider sales potential for this new addi- tion to the Harsh product range.
“This is a great example not just of joint teamwork between customer and supplier, but is also a demonstration of how we at Harsh are able to design and develop imaginative solutions to meet our customers’ require- ments,” he comments.
Source: WasteManagementWorld || February 14, 2018 |||
Feb 13, 2018 - Another month, another record at Christchurch Airport. Figures just in show the record set in December 2017, for busiest month on record, was beaten in January.
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242