Kaimai tunnel cost queried

Press, 23 June 1978, Page 3

Kaimai tunnel cost queried

P A Hamilton Private contractors belieted that the Kaimai tunnel could have cost SI6M less if thev had built in, said the national director of the Contractors' Federation (Mr I. Blincoe) yesterday. A report on the cost of the project is being preP ar ed by a sub-committee ot Parliament’s Public Expenditure Committee. The committee clerk (Mr L .1 Stesens) said that he expected the report to be tabled soon. The original estimate lor the tunnel was SHAM. This rose to 555.4 M, according to Ministry of Works and Development figures released late last year. The tunnel, built by the then Ministry of Works, took six years more to complete than expected. Mr Blincoe said that his 1 ederation had urged some time ago that the cost of 1 the project be in- ' vestigated. “While we were con- j, cerned about the cost of t the project, we were try- .

ing to put across the point that future projects of this nature be put out to tender and handled by private enterprise,” he said. One of the classic examples of this was the Tokaanu tunnel, which had been built for a sum close to the original estimate and within the prescribed time. The Assistant Commissioner of Works (Mr R. G. Norman) said that private contractors had had an portunity to bid on the Kaimai job but had not done so. The ministry had considered it important to develop machine tunnelling in New Zealand but private contractors had been unsure at the time about the pricing of such a job. There had been many physical conditions in the tunnel which could not have been forecast. In big projects situations arose where the risks could reasonably be borne only by a large agency.