More delays for Bateup Rd project
A 200-metre section of Bateup Rd in Richmond may have to be dug up, as the base is holding too much moisture to tolerate sealing.
It is the third delay for the $3.6 million Tasman District Council upgrade project, which was originally due to be completed in March but is now scheduled to finish at the end of this month.
Council engineering services manager Richard Kirby on Monday said the material used by the contractor – Higgins – was not appropriate for winter. Water had got into it, making it difficult to compact in order to take the seal. The affected area was the sub base on one side of the road near the intersection with State Highway 6.
Programme delivery manager Russell McGuigan last week told councillors much of the problem related to the season. The rain and cold ‘‘means [workers] can’t actually work the sub base to the condition they need to seal’’.
‘‘The problem they’ve got is they didn’t use the early time of the contracts sufficiently well,’’ McGuigan said.
Testing had shown there was ‘‘no option but for the contractor to remove it and use a different type of material that isn’t affected by the weather so much’’.
‘‘It’ll take a week to get it out, and a week to get it in and to seal it,’’ McGuigan said.
Richmond Ward councillor Kit Maling asked if the contractor was paying penalties and whether the council was protected ‘‘if the standard’s not right’’.
‘‘We’re certainly getting it in the neck as well as you,’’ Maling replied.
McGuigan said the contractor was about two months late, and there were means ‘‘whereby council can recover its costs’’.
While it was unfortunate that the job was late, ‘‘we won’t compromise the final quality’’, he said. ‘‘The key driver in all these projects – and Bateup Rd is no exception – is that the end result lasts a long period of time. We don’t want poor quality so the road breaks down in two years’ time.’’
Deputy mayor Tim King asked for how long the contractor would be responsible for the road. McGuigan said 12 months, but ‘‘if the material was to break, it
would break quite soon’’.
King also asked if the council was ‘‘happy with the seal on the other side of the road’’.
‘‘We know there are some patches, which aren’t to standard,’’ McGuigan replied. ‘‘We’ll do that later.’’
Kirby told councillors the contractor for Bateup Rd ‘‘has not performed as well as some of the other ones that we’ve had’’.
‘‘In this particular situation here, we probably should have gone to Higgins’ headquarters a lot sooner than we did.’’