Not a single room in the new national children’s hospital has been fully completed in line with required standards, politicians will be told on Wednesday.
The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB), the body overseeing the project, said contractor Bam is “currently abdicating its contractual responsibilities” in terms of quality, fit out and final inspections.
David Gunning, chief officer of the NPHDB, is due to provide an update on construction to the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday.
In his opening statement, he will confirm Bam has informed the board that the substantial completion date for the €2.2 billion project is now June 2025.
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This is 31 months behind the current contractual completion date of November 2022 and four months later than a date provided to the Public Accounts Committee (Pac) last May.
According to Mr Gunning, the completion date has been shifted by Bam 14 times in the last four years, and four times over the past year.
Mr Gunning will also highlight issues with the standard of rooms that Bam have claimed were completed.
“There are 5,678 clinical spaces in the new hospital, and whilst, to date, Bam has offered 3,128 as complete, none were completed to the required standard,” he will say in his opening statement.
“All rooms offered by Bam require additional work prior to our team being in a position to sign them off as complete. Bam persists in offering sections of the hospital for review and sign off when they are very obviously incomplete.”
As of the end of August, the total amount spent on the project by the NPHDB is €1,478,606,163 including VAT.
Mr Gunning will say the NPHDB is “continuing to do everything in its power to compel Bam to conclude its work and fulfil its contractual responsibilities”.
“Bam is not fulfilling its contractual obligations and consequently, we have moved to withhold 15 per cent of certified payments due to Bam. This is a lever available to the NPHDB within the contract and we have initiated it again,” he will say.
The board previously withheld 15 per cent of monies owed to the developer between May 2020 and February 2021. It also threatened to repeat this behaviour in 2023, but it was not actioned as a programme was instead put in place by the contractor.
Bam is continuing to submit “large volumes of claims, including duplication and triplication of claimed time and value”, he will say.
“It is the view of the NPHDB that Bam is seeking to implement a strategy to exert pressure on the State to secure additional monies above the contract sum, by whatever means,” he will add.
“The NPHDB is robustly defending claims that it considers to be without merit or to be inflated to prevent cost escalation and to protect the public purse. Regardless of how many times Bam asks, Bam will not be given another cent beyond what it is entitled to under contract.”
Last week, it emerged the NPHDB is to seek damages from Bam with a claim which could run to more than €20 million.
Bam recently told The Irish Times it was “fully confident” in the quality of its construction work and that the handover of rooms and desnagging of minor issues was “routine”.
A spokesman said the build phase was 93 per cent complete “based on the original scope, notwithstanding the additional work generated by the significant number of design changes”.
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