QLDC meeting highlights shovel-ready stuff-ups, lessons learned

“We stuffed” but “it’s time to move on”.

Those were the main take-aways for Queenstown Lakes councillors today, as they considered a report on what lessons had been learnt from the Kā Huanui a Tāhuna Alliance, a public-private consortium that overspent and took three years to (almost) complete three “shovel-ready” projects.

During the early stages of the initial COVID-19 lockdown (quarter two of 2020), the Government made available funding for “shovel ready” projects. 

A council report said QLDC applied for funding for a number of projects and was successful in gaining offers of part funding for two projects, namely the Queenstown Town Centre Street Upgrades project (the Street Upgrades project) and the Queenstown Town Centre Arterial Stage 1 project (the Arterial project). 

In August 2020 the Council entered into a funding agreement with Crown Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to fund the Arterial and Street Upgrade projects. The Street Upgrades and Arterial were funded at $35m and $50m respectively.

In late 2020, the Council and NZTA (partners) went to the open market to establish an Alliance and a consortium of engineering consultant companies (Beca and WSP), and contractors (Downer and Fulton Hogan) were appointed. The successful consortia (the Non-Owner Participants or NOPs), along with QLDC and NZTA (the Owner Participants or OPs), then collectively formed the Whakatipu Transport Programme Alliance - Kā Huanui a Tāhuna .

However, between October 2021 and February this year, the budget for the projects increased from an agreed $88.23m to $128.02m.

To-date only one of the projects have been completed, at a delayed timeframe, while the arterial route project will not be finished until January.

Councillor Craig Ferguson said the main lessons had been learned and better reporting processes had been put in place.

“This has really taken up a lot of council space over the last period of time. On Tuesday, I paid a visit to one of the affected motel owners who'd been behind the cage for about three years. 

“Councillor Bartlett and I paid a visit earlier in the year. So, I just thought with the fence down, I'd go up and have a wee chat.

“I asked her how she was feeling when the cage came down. She made the comment she didn't really know what to think. She said it sort of disappeared and then she thought, ‘that’s it, okay, that's it. She said, ‘we're very busy, it's time to move on’, and I think that's where we've got to do too.”

The experience, which another councillor pointed out had resulted in the chief executive not being made aware of some important details, was disappointing.

“I think we have to learn. If we don't learn from these things, it's even more disappointing.

“Councillors requested a review and that's taken 18 months for that to occur and I don't think that has enabled us to reflect the level of concern that was expressed by councillors through the process. So look, it's. This has been a really tough one for council. 

“The financial budget increases are probably the most difficult part of it and we know the reasons why for that, why that occurred and I'm pretty confident we're not going to let that happen again on a 30:10 design. That's the biggest single learning from this, is that, you know, we cannot commit to projects based on insufficient design. 

“I can assure you that any additional escalation in this project that comes back to this council, well, at least from my perspective, will not be looked at kindly, given that we have expressed an incredible amount of concern and requested a review, and are where we are today.”

Councillor Nikki Gladding was also disappointed with the time taken to get the report.

“I think the thing we've got to get right is our attitude towards things that have gone wrong. I think we need to stop being defensive because people make mistakes and people can improve, but you can't improve unless you fully grasp the extent to which we stuffed up - and that's us around the table and it's staff as well. 

“But, I'm still sensing defensiveness and I'm still seeing that, you know, good suggestions aren't being considered and that concerns me. It doesn't give me confidence going forward. The report says things like insufficient governance, oversight. It was really the lack of an early heads up, that's the issue.”

Main image: Queenstown streets being upgraded in 2022.