Mr Bertram,
OED
RESTRICTED
FROM: CO Hum
DATE: 29 June 1992
CC: Mr Ricketts, HKD
OY VAY! pa.
3016 مل
3016.
Ma
Woodrow M Metris
X 30/6
90
NEW BRITISH CONSULATE-GENERAL IN HONG KONG
1. When I was in Hong Kong last week I spoke as we had agreed to Mr Day about the designs for the new Consulate-General. I said I hoped our telegrams had put to rest his doubts about the Farrell design.
2. Mr Day did not seem to have read the telegram very thoroughly. His problem, as he described it, was a more fundamental one. Because he had not been in post at the crucial time he had not been consulted when the design brief had been drawn up or when the competing designs had been assessed. had inherited no papers on the project from his predecessor: nor, he claimed, had his Management Officer been properly consulted.
3. Mr Day said he knew we would feel he was being difficult: but better to take proper precautions now and avoid expensive disasters later. He needed to be taken through the designs by an expert and to be reassured that the points he had identified (in particular over access and security) had been thought through. He claimed that the Swires project manager entirely shared his misgivings, and his preference for the Leigh and Orange design.
4. It was clear that I was not the person who was going to be able to reassure him. I am afraid I see no alternative to a trip by an OED representative who can take Mr Day over the ground in detail. Would this be possible? I recognise that this will mean extra time and money. But perhaps, all being well, your representative could also begin work with Mr Day on the following stage of the exercise, and consider the detailed changes which will have to be made to the Farrell brief for it to be fully workable.
5. One consolation: Mr Day barely mentioned the Albany to me.
HICD 406/1
·007
Сони
RESTRICTED
CO Hum
Page 30Page 31