WIT project delayed ‘due to inadequate leadership’

The former head of a company tasked with delivering a multi-purpose sports complex to Waterford Institute of Technology has blamed “inadequate leadership” at the college for the delay in completing the project, which is now estimated to run millions of euro over budget.

The design team behind the Carriganore Sports Campus estimates that finishing phase three of the project, which began in January 2012, will cost €4.3m more than originally predicted.

The development promised a sports hall, a laboratory and classroom wing, and a two-storey fitness centre.

Eugene McKenna, the former chief executive of WIT Diverse Campus Services (DCS), has prepared a report on the situation at the request of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee.

The development, which is 60% complete, came to a halt in 2012 when WIT sought to consolidate DCS. The building has since been mothballed.

DCS funded the works for the campus from its commercial activities, contributions from the WIT Students Services Fund, sports funding grants, and bank loans.

In June 2012 WIT and the Higher Education Authority informed the company that it was to be consolidated as a subsidiary of WIT. Mr McKenna was told that the HEA had ordered that DCS was not to draw down the loan it had arranged for the project.

“I was at a complete loss to understand how the HEA would impose its decision to stop the bank borrowing with no alternative funding plan proposed, particularly at a time when the project was over 60% complete,” Mr McKenna states in the report.

“To my knowledge no due diligence was undertaken by WIT or the HEA on the potential consequences of this decision,” he writes, adding that he outlined his concerns to a number of WIT officials.

“The view that was expressed to me was that the assets of DCS could be consolidated without including the liabilities. This made no sense at all.”

The directors of DCS were told to resign with immediate effect, and WIT officials were tasked with decision-making responsibility.

The following September WIT’s president and chair of its governing body wrote to Sisk, the company building the complex, to insist that WIT would honour its commitment to the developer, and that funds for the complex had been ringfenced.

A month later the pair wrote again to Sisk to withdraw the guarantee.

In November, five months after the decision to consolidate DCS was announced, Mr McKenna was told this process was to be stopped, and that responsibility for the Sisk contract now reverted back to the company.

“This U-turn by WIT caused grave tensions, with the credibility of the project in crisis,” Mr McKenna said.

Sisk ceased work on the complex in September 2012, the project was officially suspended the following December, and no work has been carried out since.

Mr McKenna said the design team estimates that the deferral of completion of the works will see the final cost of the project come in at over €14m, up from the €9.7m original cost.

“There was inadequate leadership throughout the process,” he writes of the consolidation process.

It is estimated that €7.5m in further funding is needed to finish the complex as per the original contract.