I cannot speak for Australia, but I know that the UK and Canada earmarked construction as one of the lead industries in paving the way for full metric conversion.
I was in Canada at the time, in the 1970s, and sat (albeit briefly) on one of the construction sector’s conversion committees, which were co-ordinated by the federal government in Ottawa. I remember that the industry was in favour of conversion because of the cost savings, but I cannot remember specific figures. However, the 15% figure is quite likely typical. In the late 1980s, when I was the consulting QS on Toronto General Hospital, we hired a firm of architects to re-measure the entire 100 000 m² complex. We debated whether to do it in imperial or metric, as the original drawings (inaccurate though they were) were all in imperial, some going back to the beginning of the 20th century. That debate ended when the architects quoted fees 15% higher in imperial than doing everything in metric. We did it in metric. John F-L From: Paul Rittman Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 6:14 PM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:51572] Specifics on metrication increasing profits to Australian construction industry I know that I read somewhere on Pat Naughtin's site (Metrication Matters) that when Australia converted to the metric system, its construction firms realized increases of 15% on their (net) profits. I'd like some more info on this. I seem to recall this was in teh context of not having nearly as many cuts of wood and what not, that were unusable, because of mistakes made by wrong calculations when using imperial measures. I did a search for "Australia construction" and didn't find anything on his site. I'd like to get as specific as possible on this, because construction is one of the areas where people say converting to metric (in the US) would be as difficult as any other sector of the economy. Does anyone recall which article on Pat's site discussed this, or does anyone have any other links that might address this issue? No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2114/4903 - Release Date: 03/29/12
