Just goes to show one can always find a way to stake a claim that suits to purpose.
I'm reading sources from both
Puska and
medhead and I can't tell what the common criteria are for determining:
- What candidates are they counting in the list, e.g. single standing buildings, complexes, whole sites
- What is being costed, e.g. listed project cost, which can include all of the groundwork, auxiliary services, management, fit out (more expensive for some kinds of buildings compared to others, and nearly nothing for buildings where the purpose was mainly cemented post-construction, e.g. offices, compared to hospitals or airports)... or a subset of those costs, and what are they
Other things arising from this:
- Gizmodo gives the Gold Coast Hospital as one of the most expensive buildings in the world in the article linked by Pushka. The source of that article was Emporis (link provided) and the article was written in Dec 2014. Follow the link to Emporis, and you can't see Gold Coast Hospital anywhere on the list. Q1 Tower is on there, but that's only about $300M.
- On that note, Emporis doesn't seem to say how they are stating the cost. If they are just taking the reported total project costs at face value, then there is no temporal adjustment to allow a suitable comparison (especially when it comes to converting foreign currencies).
- The most expensive building on Emporis' list comes in at $3.9B. There are easily many buildings, or construction projects, which are much more expensive than that, which is why the costing methodology is important. As an example, the fledging-failed Berlin-Brandenberg airport, still under construction, is currently costing EUR 5.4B and rising. I guess if the project ultimately fails, it can't make the list.
- The latest medical addition to Brisbane, the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, apparently cost in the region of $1.2B. It isn't in Emporis' list (it may not be top ten, but Emporis' list is longer than that).
- Wikipedia's list of most expensive buildings (with sources cited) gives Australian Parliament - started construction in 1981 and inaugurated in 1988 - as a cost at time of construction as $1.1B. Even after the drop in the AUD, a rough calculator on the internet still gives the approximate inflation adjusted value as about US$3B (today). Now as I understand it, the Parliament building is at least one big single building, not a complex of disconnected buildings. Why is it not on Emporis' list, even if Emporis didn't decide to inflation-adjust the amount?
This is really confusing!
It reminds me of the campaign that Velocity ran once which said they were the first frequent flyer programme in Australia to allow people to earn points and status credits on award fares. What a lie... even if they were the first airline to stake that exact claim.
In any case, why the big argument about what is right or what not? So a new hospital is going to cost $2.1B. Should it cost that much? Does that include the fit out? Is it supposed to be really souped up and advanced? Those are better questions to ask. $2.1B or not, all that people want to ensure is that they are getting their money's worth.
I played on the course where Greg Norman and Wayne Grady played as juniors.
