Does the ACT need a grander headquarters than the European Union? [With poll]

That EU building is awesome. How could you not like a giant metal pupae and an assembly room that looks like a mix between a daycare centre and the old tv test pattern!!!

I want one and I don’t care how much it costs! Or if it serves any purpose even.

2 points in reply to arescarti & LWSCHP.

The paperless office is completely achievable except for some reason every public servant has to keep triplicates of BS on files for infinity for no real reason other than they like to fill their desk with folders.

The NT public service works on a soft copy only system of pdfs, word, excel and databases no paper filing required.

Working from home/remotely doesn’t mean you HAVE to sit in your bedroom all day. Go to a cafe and type up that brief, email, reddit report. Take the kids off school for a week and head down to the beach and write up those submissions and DAs. Home or remotely. Plus you would still require meetups with co-workers every week or managers every few days I’m sure to handle new projects or workloads, leave, issues etc… But you’d do these at a conference centre or restaurant or cafe, and if people can’t be there then you can video stream them in. This is exactly how industries that work 24/7 in various timezones keep their teams and projects working.

My original point was by the time this building is 10 years old it will be antiquated because there will be much better systems of people mangement meaning we won’t have to set up cubicle farms so people can fill out their 7:21 flex sheets every day.

This is what 50 million gets you in Melbourne.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_House_2

How are theyjustifying this HUUUUUUUUGGGGGEEEEE cost?

This is what $500 million will buy you in Instanbul

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=272762

$432m is a typo isn’t, surely it is meant to read $43m, then again those towers would look good out in Crace.

PantsMan said :

We’ll all be using public transport to commute from our public housing to the weekly unveiling of public art out the front of the public service building before heading off to our public service jobs on same said public transport.

No cars required (or allowed under our totalitarian, Marxists government).

+1

In my patch of the woods more has been spent in the past year on a single, hideous sculpture than community services, and bus and traffic improvements the community has been crying out for years. The quicker some of Jon Stanhope’s grandiose visions for Canberra are put to bed by Katie G the better, starting with the pleasure dome.

$400m = more than $1,000 per ACT resident. Mind boggling and obscene – unless you’re the developer who wins the contract (hint hint)

arescarti42 said :

Sleaz274 said :

Everyone in the world can see that remote working or working from home is the way of the future and will be commonplace as soon as the 70s-80s born & bred managers die off or retire.

In the 1980s it was obvious that the way of the future was the paperless office…

Yeah. I think that working from home would be great occasionally, but would have knobs on it as a full time proposition. I’m a fairly solitary guy, but even I get a great deal of satisfaction from the social aspects of my work. I would miss that greatly if I had to work entirely from my home.

Also, my home is my home. It’s my sanctuary, the place where I nurture my relationship with my wife and my children, grow my tomatoes, clean my guns etc etc. I love being at home, and I hate it when I have to bring work home. I know there are others who feel like me, so I wouldn’t write off the conventional workplace just yet.

That being said, the idea of spending nearly half a billion dollars on offices for the ACT government makes me reach for the barf bag. How very, very dare they.

Sleaz274 said :

Everyone in the world can see that remote working or working from home is the way of the future and will be commonplace as soon as the 70s-80s born & bred managers die off or retire.

In the 1980s it was obvious that the way of the future was the paperless office…

$432 million?

Surely not. That doesn’t sound right even for the ACT Government.

Everyone in the world can see that remote working or working from home is the way of the future and will be commonplace as soon as the 70s-80s born & bred managers die off or retire.

90% of my work could be completed from home, all I use is excel, email, one specialist program 3 times a year and a phone (barely). My computer at home is 10x faster and 100x more efficient.

Instead of building a super structure to house all the public servants they should be looking to send 1/3 at least to work from home and save on office fittings, electricity, a/c, heating, desktops, phone charges, desks, paper, etc… Then let employees claim appropriate usage back on their tax and you essentially externalise your costs to the Commonwealth. Win – win – win.

Basically they are building a building to house 2011 work management ideas which is supposed to last 25-50 years whereby workplaces hopefully will be vastly changed, especially once the NBN is in.

An “office park” on the vacant land between Yarralumla and Curtin would be a good option; central, lots of space to expand and for carparking.