It's the economy, stupid...

A well-known saying from America is “It’s the Economy, stupid!”, mainly understood to be a standard response to the question of a key election issue. Some say it was blurted out by a Clinton campaign manager to staff, and then made public. But I digress…

Here, it would be an appropriate response when asked why someone went out of business. There’s a lot of that going around.

It has awkward implications for construction projects.

Recently, FLOOR TEST Australia ran some indicative tests on a major Aged Care facility renovation/extension in rural Victoria. The original construction company sadly folded amid the project, which pretty much stalled the whole thing for several months.

The upshot was that the continuous labyrinth of housing units and associated facilites consisted of two different slab pours, several months apart. This poses a challenge for the stakeholders, especially where original costings may not have allowed for any moisture mitigation or other slab prep works, let alone for two sections of slab with potentially different levels of moisture.

The obvious step to take was to make sure there was an even spread of probes across each of the two differently aged sections of concrete. Sure enough, some readings were markedly different to others.

I imagine, however, that this would have been the least complex issue to arise from a major construction halted by a builder going bust!

Our sympathies go out to the folks who are affected personally and financially by this slow economy. It’s tentacles sure are reaching everywhere.