Lessons to learn from bypass project
It's $40 million over budget, still not finished after three years, and one of the most unpopular projects in Queenstown's history.
Councillors sat down on Thursday to discuss where they went wrong on the controversial Queenstown Arterial Road Project - about 1km of road costing $128m.
The project is being delivered by the Whakatipu Transport Programme Alliance - a partnership between Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC), Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, Beca, WSP, Downer New Zealand and Fulton Hogan.
QLDC commissioned Dave Brash to conduct a review of the Alliance model and the project, and on Thursday considered the long-term lessons from the 107-page report.
Brash says the Alliance was created in the "fire of the Covid-19 crisis" and any review in the cold light of day is likely to find problems.
"Blaming and re-litigation of previous decisions in this context can be meaningless," he says. "Broadly, this Review has found that the decisions to enter into the funding agreements and form an Alliance were reasonable in the context of the time. However, given the large size and high risks associated with the programme more oversight at councillor level, better reporting systems and more oversight by senior management would have avoided being “surprised” by cost increases.
"In particular, earlier heads-up would have given the Council a better opportunity to either descope elements or continue with a better understanding of the cost drivers and be confident that the benefits still outweighed the costs.
"Nevertheless, the overall outcome is still good value for money."
The arterial road links Frankton Road with Gorge Road, a job already done by Stanley Street.
Councillors' comments
Deputy mayor Quentin Smith says: "This has been a really tough one for the council. The financial budget increases are probably the most difficult part it, and we all know the reasons for that, and I'm pretty confident we're not going to let that happen again on a 30% design.
"That's the biggest single learning from this, that we cannot commit to projects based on insufficient design, and now we're still faced with a risk ... and I can assure you that any additional escalation in this project that comes back to this council will, at least from my perspective, not be looked at kindly."
Both Smith and Cr Niki Gladding expressed concern at how long it took the review to be completed, some 18 months.
"I think the thing we've got to get right is our attitude towards things that go wrong," Gladding says. "We need to stop being defensive, because people make mistakes, and people can improve, but you can't improve unless you fully grasp the extent to which we've stuffed up."
Gladding says she still senses that defensiveness from councillors and staff. She wants to see the council look at how it defines tolerances and look at forecasting overruns and exceptions, so that they are reported in time.
"It was really the lack of an early heads-up that's the issue. There was no early opportunity for descoping or delaying to meet budget constraints."
Gladding has also written to the Ombudsman to highlight the fact that council staff have refused to show her the original report presented by Brash and the edits made by staff. She says without that, the public doesn't know who actually wrote what in the report.
Cr Lisa Guy, however, struck a different tone, saying the project was one of the few from Covid-19 'shovel-ready' funding to come to fruition, kicking off when international borders were closed in September 2021.
"One of the bits that really stood out to me from Mr Brash's report is that we have got a good outcome and that the Alliance was ... most likely the most effective way to get this project delivered," Guy says.
"I know it has been really challenging for our community to experience this disruption in this build but I think we've got quite short memories of how disrupted we all were through the pandemic, and how we were really just trying to create opportunity to keep this community functioning through what we hope may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
Cr Craig 'Ferg' Ferguson was one of the councillors who made repeated visits to residents and businesses behind the barricades on the new roading project. He spoke again to a motelier on Tuesday.
"I asked her what she thought when the cage came down and she said she didn't really know what to think," Ferguson says. "Then she said 'we're very busy, it's time to move on'. I think that's where we've got to."
