THE $3.2 million budget blowout on the Lavington Sportsground redevelopment could have been even bigger.
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Wearing the financial hit already revealed from the discovery of unsuitable soil for the secondary sportsfield was preferred to ceasing works until the site was re-assessed.
Albury Council was presented with a project update this week with council lawyers, Kell Moore, also providing a lengthy confidential briefing on an ongoing investigation into reasons for the budget blowout which could result in legal action.
Council’s leisure facilities team leader Michael Stanton said, in his report, stopping works would have involved “substantial contractual penalties” in both cost and delay on top of existing costs.
“The only reasonable option to undertake the excavation of the unsuitable material was to proceed on a cost-plus basis,” he said.
“Once the volume of unsuitable material stock-piled onsite was known the subsequent disposal to the (Albury tip) was negotiated with the construction company (Depan Group) on a volume rate basis.”
Mr Stanton said it was clear the scope of the earthworks as designed didn’t take into account the significant volume of unsuitable material encountered.
“The extra earthworks activities required to remove and dispose of the unsuitable grey silt (and rejected fill) was clearly outside the scope of works under the construction contract and so a substantial variation to the works had to be negotiated,” he said.
Works started in August last year and as topsoil stripping progressed it became evident that a substantial part of the site had a layer of grey silt which was unsuitable for use as fill material.
It covered an area of about 16,000 square metres and and varied in depth from 50cm to 1.5m.
Rock was also discovered on site.
“The unsuitable soil issue has delayed the construction of the additional sporting field and critically the timing of planting the couch grass surface which was originally planned to commence from December 2017,” Mr Stanton said.
The site is hoped to be available for use in January next year.
Albury Council is expecting some disruption for cricket training next summer and when the main oval grandstand is being redeveloped there could be some impact for the 2019 football season.
