Mr. Fred Barry:

As the Senator knows and can see by driving by the site, a great deal of progress has been made on the main hospital construction already. The frame of the building is beginning to rise above ground level so it can be seen from the outside. Some of the work is behind the original programme. Some of it is not. There probably is not a single reason for that. It is a very big job and even for a very large international contractor such as BAM, getting up and running efficiently on the scale required is always difficult and can take a little longer than anticipated. Sub-contracts have to be finalised and even though everybody knew the contract would be awarded and so on, the further negotiations with sub-contractors sometimes take a bit longer than might be the case. Design details have to be agreed in support of the construction. The construction industry is very busy and resourcing skilled tradesmen and construction management staff as well is difficult because they are hard to come by at the moment. Those are all the challenges.

The site itself is very congested. Access onto the site from the outside is very difficult. It is a busy part of town. There is a lot of traffic. That is difficult. We are building everywhere within the site. Everybody knew this going into the project and everybody planned for it but very often the reality when it is actually encountered can be a bit more difficult than had been anticipated.

External factors come into play also. For example, there was high windage for a period earlier in the year and the tower cranes were out of action. Factors like that play a part.

There are three years of construction to go. BAM, which is the main contractor, and the principal sub-contractors, Mercury Engineering and the Jones Group, are very large, experienced companies and with the time in front of them I would say they have many opportunities to mitigate any delays to date.