The Gautrain
Photo by: Duane Daws
The delay and disruption claim the Bombela consortium had filed against the Gauteng government regarding the construction of the Gautrain “was taking a long time”, and would only be resolved by 2016, said Murray & Roberts CE Henry Laas on Thursday.
Last year August the construction and engineering group expected a resolution, through arbitration, by December 2014.
Murray & Roberts was a member of the Bombela consortium, which built, and was now operating, the R26.4-billion Gautrain rapid rail system on the provincial government’s behalf.
Bombela claimed it had experienced delays and disruption in construction work on the public–private partnership project. The consortium said one of the issues was, for example, that the land on which construction had to take place was not provided by the province as scheduled.
The claim was regarded as a megaclaim by Murray & Roberts, valued at billions of rand, and not millions.
The Gautrain water ingress claim – a separate arbitration matter from the delay and disruption claim – should be resolved in November, noted Laas.
This case related to the volume of water ingress in the tunnel between Rosebank and Park stations, which had delayed the opening of this leg of the route from August 2011 to June 2012.
A ruling had been made in Bombela’s favour on the Sandton cavern case, added Laas.
He said the underground Sandton station was originally to be a cut-and-cover operation – a process whereby the site would be excavated, the station build, and then covered. However, construction was forced to shift to what Murray & Roberts believed was a more expensive underground construction method.
Laas said the ruling on this matter had been made in favour of Bombela, but that the quantum of the claim still had to be determined.
Another major project where Murray & Roberts had to turn to arbitration was the Gorgon Pioneer material offloading facility (GPMOF), in Australia, where the company recorded a R1.2-billion loss in the 2012 financial year.
Laas expected the process to be resolved in the 2015 financial year. The same time-frame was expected on disputes relating to the Dubai International Airport project.