Deepening divisions between BAM and National Children's Hospital board

Construction of the new National Children's Hospital taking place in Dublin. Picture: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

The contractor for the new children's hospital has said it is "fully committed" to delivering it but claimed it had still not received a fully complete, co-ordinated design for the project.

BAM issued a statement in which it said it wanted to "clarify a number of matters" that arose at a meeting of the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday when the National Children’s Hospital was discussed.

That Committee meeting had heard that more than 600 claims for extra costs, amounting to over €200m, have been submitted by the National Children's Hospital contractor.

The Committee was also told that the board does not have a revised cost for the project and is still working to the original €1.433bn budget despite receiving a significant number of claims.

Social Democrat co-leader Róisín Shortall accused the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) of being "delusional" after its chief officer David Gunning said they are still working to the original timeline, despite the fact that the project has been delayed by at least nine months this year.

Mr Gunning said he could not give a completion date for the project, but payments to the contractor were 43% below what had been projected in October which "gives an indication in financial terms" of how far behind the project is.

The committee was told that an extra €15m will be needed to cover legal costs associated with fighting claims made by the contractor, BAM, from the start of 2020 to the middle of 2022.

However, Mr Gunning could not say how much had originally been budgeted for legal fees.

In its statement issued on Wednesday evening, BAM said it was fully committed to delivering on the project as quickly and efficiently as possible and is availing of derogations for extended working hours wherever possible.

Referring to the meeting, it said: "The impression was given that BAM had no Work Programme. BAM has submitted several programmes and has updated them every month tracking actual versus planned progress. Each programme submitted, including the current one, has a specified predicted end date. 

A man with a face maks passes by the site of the new National Children’s Hospital in Dublin. Picture: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

"The client is maintaining that for technical reasons (some related to Covid) the programme has deficiencies which makes it 'non-compliant'. 

"BAM disagrees and is satisfied that the programme as submitted is more than what is needed to monitor progress. The current programme submitted by BAM has over 27,000 activities which incorporate the latest design information.  

"This compares with an accepted compliant programme at Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) stage in January 2019 which had approximately 16,000 activities."

BAM also said it had still not received a fully complete, co-ordinated design for the project.   

"New amendments are being added all the time. The Contract requires BAM to notify the NPHDB of every event which might give rise to an additional cost or a delay or lose its entitlement. There have been almost 10,000 new drawings (including Mechanical and Electrical drawings) since GMP stage in January 2019. 

"Therefore it is hardly surprising that there are hundreds of notifications from BAM and its major subcontractors of potential additional costs/delays."

It also said the Covid-19 situation "continues to provide great uncertainty for the project timelines" and added: "We are putting measures in place to get as many workers on-site and productivity as high as possible within this context but the sooner that Covid restrictions are eased the better."