Contractor dumped from hospital project
A man behind a firm contracted to work on Christchurch Hospital’s new acute services building says his business is ‘‘finished’’ after the contract was cancelled with two days’ notice.
Troy Lange, director of Grace Development 2008 Ltd, said the project had been plagued by delays.
Grace Development was contracted to install wall boards on three levels of the new building, which would provide services for patients needing to recover from surgery or short-term treatment for severe injuries, illness, or urgent medical conditions.
Lange said the company had completed about $850,000 worth of work. Its contract was worth $3 million.
Lange was sent an email from CPB Contractors on Saturday saying Grace Development’s access to the site had been revoked. In a meeting on Monday, the company’s contract was cancelled.
‘‘It’ll finish us. We will go into liquidation,’’ he said.
‘‘I have a young family, three young kids. I’m fighting for my family now – it’s just not right.’’
Lange laid off his five staff and told his 20-or-so subcontractors ‘‘they’ve got no work’’.
‘‘They were pretty good about it, but I could hear in their voices they were wondering what they were going to do.’’
CPB’s email cited quality, safety and resource issues as the reason for the contract cancellation.
The email said Grace workers were wearing short-sleeved shirts when long-sleeved were required.
It also said Grace did not have sufficient staff on site to complete the contracted work and some work had been finished to a poor standard.
CPB ignored The Press’ repeated requests for comment.
Lange refuted CPB’s claims and said Grace Developments should have already completed its assigned work, but ‘‘the engineers are not getting the mark-offs through to us quick enough’’.
‘‘We’ve been doing the work as quick as we can, but … they say ‘Here are some sign-offs, we need you on that tomorrow’ – that just can’t happen.
‘‘They need to give us the workload a month in advance, [so] we can say ‘We need this much resource, we’ve got this signed-off work’, and we can say to our guys around town, ‘Here is actual signed-off work’.’’
Lange said Grace’s contractors and others were avoiding work at the site.
‘‘People have heard about the hospital – that it’s a fight and a struggle getting the work signedoff – and [they] don’t want to go near it, so we’ve struggled to get people to work there.’’
The Press asked the CPB project manager who Lange reported to if engineer sign-offs were to blame for any potential project delays and what the project’s expected completion date was.
He was also asked if contractors were avoiding work at the site because of a struggle to get work signed-off.
The project manager did not respond to emails or phone calls.
Ministry of Health critical projects director Michael Hundleby said he could not comment on the claims as it was a contractual matter between CPB and Grace Developments.
Delays for such a large project were not unusual and had been ‘‘factored into the planning’’, he said.
The Hospital Redevelopment Partnership Group was satisfied the project was on-track for completion at the end of 2018, as contracted.
In August, CPB Contractors was selected to design and construct the Christchurch convention centre, another embattled project beset with delays.