Real-Life Math
You are a civil engineer working for city hall. It's your job
to design, plan and manage the building of any infrastructure commissioned
by the city.
You've just been asked to update the plans for a
sewage treatment plant. The plans are 5 years old. At that time, the person
who had your job calculated the cost of the entire project at $30 million.
But that was too much for the city at the time, so it was tabled. Until now.
City
officials now think they can afford the project. Besides, environmental regulations
make it almost a necessity. So they've asked you to update the project
costs.
Here's how the original project broke down:
| Cost of buying land: | $1 million |
| Site work (bulldozing, etc.): | $2 million |
| Legal fees: | $500,000 |
| Environmental permits: | $500,000 |
| Materials (concrete, etc.): | $12 million |
| Labor: | $14 million |
It's been 5 years since the last engineer made those calculations,
however. The prices of things have gone up, but at different rates.
After
some research, you discover that:
- Land prices have risen 5 percent in the last 5 years within city limits.
- The cost of site work has dropped by an average of 6 percent (due to a
slowdown in large-scale construction projects).
- Legal fees have risen rapidly, by at least 10 percent.
- Three new environmental regulations have gone into effect, doubling the
cost of project permits.
- Two years ago, a strict new set of building guidelines was put into place
by the state. Designed to protect against earthquakes and hurricanes, these
new regulations will require the use of steel-reinforced concrete throughout
the building instead of regular concrete. This will increase the cost of building
materials by 11 percent.
- There have also been changes in the labor laws. All workers on city-funded
projects must now be paid at a new higher minimum wage. Labor costs have risen
4 percent as a result.
With this information, you must work out the new cost of the project.
How
much will the sewage plant cost the city now?