You can forget November. And there will be no Christmas present for frustrated Wellington region motorists either. Transmission Gully won’t be open in 2020.
Delivery of the $1 billion highway will likely be extended to 2021, the New Zealand Transport Agency has confirmed.
The project has been flattened by Covid-19 and steamrolled by the Government’s alert level restrictions. Now it also faces the challenges of winter.
But it’s unclear whether the likely delay will mean the public-private consortium tasked with building it will be fined thousands of dollars every day it misses its original deadline.
The latest assigned Transmission Gully delivery date was November 1, with NZTA previously warning of a $16,000 fine for each day it was late.
If the road wasn’t open by December 18, it was to be slapped with a $10 million penalty.
“As [NZTA] is currently involved in negotiations with the JV [joint venture], we’re not in a position to provide further comment at this time,” a spokeswoman said on Sunday, when asked about whether the fines would still occur.
Andrew Thackwray, NZTA senior manager in project delivery, said it was clear the Level 4 lockdown and Level 3 restrictions “will have an impact on the completion date, which will likely extend into 2021”.
“As the project is a public-private partnership with different commercial terms, Waka Kotahi [NZTA] is negotiating with the builder, CPB/HEB Joint Venture, to confirm and agree a new completion date.”
Work resumed on April 29 at a number of sites along the 27-kilometre route, Thackwray said. New work sites were being progressively started as crews were re-inducted to ensure compliance with Covid-19.
“We understand that the builder has made adjustments to the programme of work in line with the change of season,” Thackwray said.
“Typically these changes would be more gradual as we go through the seasons, however all work was suspended during the lockdown and we are now heading into winter so we expect changes need to be made to reflect that.
“Many of the activities due to be completed were not scheduled to be worked on at the onset of winter so this requires a major change in how work on Transmission Gully will need to be delivered.”
Work was under way to develop a new delivery plan as quickly as possible, using local resources, Thackwray said.
He said there were 182 people working across four reopened sites. Another 59 were working from home to support the project.
A “significant portion” of site engineering and supervision team – about 80 roles – and some of the operations personnel were still overseas at home, unable to return to the site with border restrictions, he said.
When the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown was announced, reports emerged of a mass exodus of Australian construction workers, who chose to head home rather than wait out the lockdown here.
News of the likely delay comes after Nick Leggett, chief executive of the forum which represented several regional trucking associations, said there were suggestions the project’s budget had been cut and the timeline extended for two years.
“In the final straight of construction of such a large project, which was due to be completed by the end of this year, it is a worry to hear that contracts for supply and equipment have been cut, and workforce numbers reduced.”
National’s Transport spokesman Chris Bishop echoed Leggett’s concerns, saying the Government’s rhetoric wasn’t matching up with what’s happening on the ground and called for urgent clarification.