Messy process to get long delayed Gully road open
Motorway has missed several deadlines
On Thursday Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency said Transmission Gully would be open to traffic by the end of the month, but the way this message was delivered read nothing like an opening date announcement.
The troubled $1.25 billion motorway out of Wellington has already missed several previous opening deadlines, so it’s understandable if people are a bit sceptical of this one.
Especially because no actual date has been specified. Normally Waka Kotahi provides a date, like when the road was scheduled to open on September 27 last year.
That September deadline was referred to as a “contractually agreed opening date“.
In last Thursday’s announcement Waka Kotahi said it has “instructed the contractor“to open the road by way of a change notice.
This sounds more like an order to open the road and suggests Waka
Kotahi has had enough of the Transmission Gully wrangle.
The fact the transport agency has resorted to issuing a change notice means negotiations have failed behind the scenes.
Transmission Gully is being built through a public-private partnership (PPP), the Wellington Gateway Partnership (WGP), with CPB Contractors and HEB Construction subcontracted to carry out the design and construction.
There’s also another party involved called Ventia, the company that will operate and maintain the motorway for 25 years after it’s built.
All of these parties, along with Waka Kotahi, have been locked in negotiations following the Covid-19 Delta outbreak last year. This is because the nationwide lockdown and ongoing Auckland lockdown affected the road being ready in time for a previous opening deadline.
One of the issues being negotiated was an early access arrangement.
The parties actually failed to reach an agreement on this, which Waka
Kotahi has openly acknowledged. Although the point has been somewhat lost in the hype of the road finally opening.
The change notice, or Waka Kotahi instructing the contractor to open the road, is a contractual tool the transport agency can use as a way around this disagreement behind the scenes to get the road open.
So there’s at least one party who won’t be happy with the announcement. It’s unclear what options that party now has at its disposal, if any, and whether there’s any appetite to escalate its unhappiness further.
The problem is that Transmission Gully is going to open in an incomplete state.
Some quality assurance tests have been deferred and requirements for others have been reduced in a bid to get the road open earlier than would otherwise be possible.
Up until the beginning of this month Waka Kotahi has been adamant all of the 100 contractually required safety and quality assurance tests must be completed before the road could open.
So why the change of heart? The road’s weekly progress reports say it all.
At the end of last month only 46 of the safety and quality assurance tests had been accepted by an independent reviewer as meeting the required standards.
This was just one more test than the week prior to that, when just 45 tests had been accepted.
The week before that just 42 had been accepted. Remember, there are 100 of these tests in total.
The pace of getting these tests all signed off could only be described as glacial and alarmingly, made it look like it would be a very long time before the road was fit to open.
Instead, Waka Kotahi agreed to defer 19 outstanding quality assurance tests originally required under the contract to be completed before the road’s opening.
On top of this, Waka Kotahi also agreed to reduce the requirements for a further 30 tests.
And just like that, when the most recent progress update landed last week there were just 14 tests outstanding, 13 of which had reduced requirements.
Waka Kotahi has made assurances none of the deferred tests will compromise public safety, as they relate to ensuring the long-term quality of the road.
So it’s all a bit messy but Waka Kotahi obviously thinks it’s worth it to get the road open.
Only time will tell.