19 Jan 2018

woke up at 7.50 today. changed and left for work. bought a bun for breakfast below the office and arrived at office 9.15.worked on mainly the minutes for the previous days meeting. presented a first draft of the options in graphical form for the potential project. MT presented a house which was to have design options for DC charge and for non DC charge. Hence, what occupied me for most of yesterday and today was figuring out the calculation for Development charge. I had all the values i needed actually, from plot ratio of 1958 to 1980 and even 2003, but what was missing was the approved GFA and date in which that happened. As this would affect the year of DC rates,  the charge exemption was the one that more precise information was needed. Getting the plot ratio from 1958 was an interesting process of getting a number of maximum persons per acre to maximum persons per hectare. And having to multiply it by a factor to arrive at an EPR (equivalent plot ratio) which can be then used. In the end, i organised all the options in a table, and finally sent it out at 6.30pm. On the way home, i met the surveyor who works next door, and i could ask him all the questions i always had. Firstly was about the rate, on how did do they usually arrive at a baseline, and somehow the answer shouldn't surprise me but it still did was to compare it to previous projects. He called it a "science and an art". The second question was comparing a steel construction to r.c construction, which is cheaper. he mention that the matrix were different and that it is not like comparing tile a to tile b, where the substrate were the same. He said although steel as a material was more expensive, it is usually leaner, and doesn't require formwork, wheras r.c members r usually bigger, and require formwork. So there is savings in terms of labour cost.