A R2,1-billion contract for the construction of Cape Town’s 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium was on Tuesday awarded to a joint venture between Murray & Roberts and WBHO.
The award, made by the city council’s bid adjudication committee, clears the way for the contractors to move on site.
According to the director of Cape Town’s 2010 technical team, Dave Hugo, this is likely to happen next week.
The 68 000-seater stadium’s total budget, which was approved by the council last week, is R2,9-billion.
That amount includes contingency and escalation fees, professional fees payable to a design consortium, insurance, fittings and fixtures and a so-called ”Fifa overlay” of R30-million.
The overlay, Hugo explained after Tuesday’s committee meeting, was made up of items — mostly IT-related — that would be installed solely for the 2010 tournament.
In a report to the adjudication committee, Hugo noted that in negotiations, the joint venture — which has still to be formally constituted — had knocked R90-million off its tender price.
Hugo also drew the committee’s attention to what he called ”certain risks”, among them the city’s continuing concern over the 10% escalation allowance provided for in the budget.
This, he said, was ”considered to be inadequate”.
”[The] National Treasury has on numerous occasions been requested to underwrite all escalation in excess of 10% but no confirmation in this regard has been forthcoming.”
The city’s professional management and design team believes that volatility in the rand and other macro-economic factors will push escalation to 18% to 20% over the next three years.
Hugo also said that though the tender envisaged a contract completion date of November 16 2009, delays in awarding it had pushed the date back to January 2010.
This date is not in compliance with Fifa and the [local] organising committee deadlines for the completion of the project by end October 2009,” he said.
However, given the fact that in negotiations to bring down the price of the project, the complexity of the structure was also reduced, the city’s professional team was confident Fifa would have access to the stadium by the end of October.
That date was ”just not negotiable”, and if necessary, the contractors would work double shifts, bring in extra suppliers, and do ”whatever is necessary”. — Sapa