19032010

Costs overruns for school buildings

It's becoming common knowledge now that the Australian government is also getting itself into a pickle on cost overruns for school building projects.

For instance, an outside learning area for Hastings Public School in Port Macquarie was originally planned to cost $400k but expected to now cost $1 million! This outdoor learning area is basically just a simple covered area, i.e. a standard metal construction over a concrete pad. it doesn't even have any walls as such, so its one million dollars for a roof!

One has to ask:

• where is the evidence of competitive tendering being undertaken?
• Why are not local builders able to be involved in tendering for such simple projects?
• Who is actually responsible for ensuring the public money is being effectively spent.

What I find most odd, if this is indeed meant to be part of the stimulus package - then why are big country wide contractors being used to run these projects...  How can this be stimulating local economies? How can this be helping local businesses and job security?...

Also, how can this be helping the environment - $400k buys a lot of green technology (water tanks, solar water heaters, insulation, passive solar, etc, etc)... Also using local businesses will help keep the provisioning of the project as local as possible reducing the overall environmental impact of the work..



In short, I reckon something is rotten here...

More examples...

• $340,000 new school building ‘not a shell’
• Teachers want audit of spending on new school buildings