Greenmeadows fiasco: four years later, we finally know what went wrong

ANALYSIS: The promised external assessment of one of Nelson City Council’s most beleaguered projects has finally been made public and the findings are damning.

The Pūtangitangi Greenmeadows Community Center construction project has been controversial from the start. Over there were multiple significant cost increases – many, but not all, because the municipality asked for more functions.

Alarm bells really started ringing 2018, two years after construction started, when a last-ditch call for more financing was brought to the council.

City contractors – some involved in the project, some not – had a better understanding than most of what they saw, as the “Jurassic Park” project didn’t develop as expected, looking “like it every time you go.” going back in time.”

READ MORE:
* Review for troubled council building, Greenmeadows, slated for next month
* Greenmeadows fiasco ‘solved’ with $340,000 payment
* Greenmeadows fiasco puts pressure on other municipal projects
* Mayor says risk reporting won’t identify ‘steamy train wreck’ projects

Finally someone blew the whistle and delivered stuff a document of all known construction errors in the building at that time.

The list seemed endless at first, but only got bigger as time went on: more questions were asked, more people came forward, and more mysteries were discovered in the “beast that got out of hand.”

There were mysterious subcontractors from out of town and unpaid motel bills. Found an independent review of the building “much more” problems than expected, including a “twist” in the roofincorrectly installed or missing reinforcements and other fundamental blunders.

Finally, after several years and a legal process that brought the project to a successful conclusion and the municipality demands $340,000 backhas made public the full and final assessment of how the board’s processes contributed to the fiasco.

The external review was performed by: Klu’dup, the Capital Intelligence department from project management company RDT Pacific.

The reviewers discovered a list of fundamental flaws in the council’s processes.

Getting started (cases)

The first step of any project is to identify what problem needs to be solved and how best to solve it – this is the role of the business case.

The municipality encountered the first hurdle, with a business case that “did not address any of the requirements…[of a business case] sufficiently detailed”.

“Further, there is no evidence that the business case was referenced in, or included in, the engagement, cost plan, risk plan, benefit realization plan, or procurement plan… at any time after the decision to invest was made.”

Project overviews help keep projects short

The project briefing is where requirements, objectives and expectations can be found, where constraints are emphasized, assumptions are tested and benchmarks are set “by which to measure project delivery and success”.

“There was no project brief as defined,” Klu’dup reported.

This meant that “the project delivery team was left to create their own, different interpretations of the project requirements” as the project progressed.

“There is no evidence as to why a formal brief has not been developed, but we assume that the common impulse to ‘just keep going’ may have prevailed.”

Furthermore, no basic program was developed to keep the project on track. “Instead, the program end dates were essentially allowed to shift.”

Up the creek without paddle, captain or rudder

Anyone who has worked on a joint project knows how important it is for everyone involved to know what their task is and when to complete it.

This kind of management framework was lacking in action, forcing staff to struggle through an already confused project.

The evaluators found that there was a lack of a clear communication structure and standard project management meetings, and that “some internal project managers” [were] selected without the required skills and experience”.

Governance frameworks can usually be found in Project Execution Plans – something the Greenmeadows project didn’t have.

There were also no project control group forums, a sort of meeting that is “usually held monthly.”

“In the absence of such a forum, the project seems to have relied on inexperienced, over-dedicated staff who ‘do the right thing’.”

Plan purchasing or come a cropper

The best practice method for selecting contractors includes careful procurement planning, gathering project information, determining a desired delivery model, and planning a market approach and tender process.

Instead, Greenmeadows’ tender had “elements of a procurement approach that were adopted or developed on an ad hoc basis”, and missed red flags.

“The appointed external project manager achieved the lowest overall scores for all non-pricing attributes and had a price for submitting the bid [$4.6 million] significantly lower than the average.

“A competent in-house project leader would have been alarmed at the offer of prizes… and the compensation offered by the chosen consultant (which was clearly inadequate for the planned project),” the review read.

There were also “very surprising” omissions in the contract, including no requirement for a quality plan or professional liability insurance.

Some of the review was redacted, but the reviewers then said they “could only speculate that they didn’t recognize the risk involved in choosing the ‘not required’ checkbox.”

Recommendations

The assessment included several recommendations to help prevent similar disasters in the future, many of which the council had already implemented before the assessment was completed.

Many of those recommendations amounted to taking the time to prepare plans, instructions, and similar roadmaps before the shovel hits the ground.

The Board has already made several changes, including improvements to internal resources for project delivery, allocating appropriate contingencies, better understanding project risks in advance and conducting ongoing risk assessments while projects are running, and establishing a subcommittee on procurement to “increase governance oversight of procurement”.

The municipality now applies a “non-price attribute advantage” of up to 10% to local contractors in tender processes and has increased due diligence on bidders.

The council has also improved IWI engagement processes across all project phases.

The full report can be read here.