09/12/2025
This isn’t a building site.
This is an NHS food prep corridor.
That manhole cover has been backing up soil and waste in the same area staff prep food for sick people.
We first looked at this over 3 years ago. It’s still like this today.
And here’s the mad bit… these are the sort of costs JUST to work out what’s wrong with it, not to actually fix it:
– Hygienic hoarding: £1,900
– Investigations and surveys: £2,900
– Clean and decon: £900
– Principal contractor fees: +30% on top
– Site manager: £400 a day
– Labour: £300 a day
– Project manager: £850 a day
– External QS: £90 an hour, dragged across “option studies” the Trust will never go ahead with
Then add estates staff, consultants, meetings, shutdown plans and downtime for catering…
Or they just carry on prepping food around an open manhole and hope it doesn’t back up today.
Same contractors seem to win the same work on site over and over.
I know what this stuff actually costs.
What they are paying is easily 5x what it should be, and half the time they don’t even have a basic quantity surveyor helping these clueless NHS project managers work out how to spend our money properly.
This is linked to Nightmare Customers & Non Payers because it’s everyone’s business.
It’s not “their” budget. It’s ours.
The taxes we graft for are getting sprayed on reports, day rates and pet contractors, while simple jobs like this sit for years with no proper audit and no outcome.
Years of paperwork.
Same hole in the floor.
Same food going past it to sick people.
If this was where your family’s food was getting made, would you be happy with this?
