The contractor repairing Austinmer ocean pool had ‘‘performance issues’’ and was up for financial penalties for missed deadlines, Wollongong City Council infrastructure and works manager Mike Hyde has revealed.
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Specialised Marine Services, based in Narellan, has gone into voluntary liquidation and has packed up and left the job, which was originally estimated to be completed in September.
The liquidator will find only $125 in share capital in the company, and is securing assets to try to realise payments for creditors.
‘‘A number of us have observed pretty well from the outset that they didn’t seem to be putting sufficient resources into the pool job.’’
Mr Hyde said there were ‘‘time risks’’ with the challenging job that did not seem to have been sufficiently factored in by the contractor.
‘‘Obviously we had performance issues with him,’’ Mr Hyde said.
‘‘We’ve got financial penalties we can apply and he was up for a lot of financial penalties from a time in the not-too-distant future.
‘‘To me it demonstrates how seriously hard it is to work in that environment.
‘‘They were well credentialled, they’d done good work before. We had a full expectation and we had no reason to say that they couldn’t perform.’’
Mr Hyde defended the original estimation of the work to be done, which had to be expanded and the cost increased after the job started.
‘‘I don’t have X-ray vision and they don’t have X-ray vision, so you don’t know what’s under the ground [or] the concrete,’’ he said.
‘‘They are the ones that have to price in that risk.’’
SMS owner Michael Lee has declined to comment while his company is being liquidated.
Late on Thursday 10 council workers were busy removing formwork and debris from the northern pool in a bid to make it safe.
The topic was sure to dominate the conversation at the Austinmer Early Morning Swimmers Club Christmas party on Thursday night.
Barring absence or injury, Brian Cummins, 66, has swum every day throughout the year at Austinmer, for 20 years. He and the other ‘‘30 to 40’’ daily swimmers have wondered since mid-year why the repair work seemed to be going so slowly.
‘‘A number of us have observed pretty well from the outset that they didn’t seem to be putting sufficient resources into the pool job,’’ Mr Cummins said.
‘‘On days when there was a low tide, or they’d pumped water out of the pool ... there were just four people working there.
‘‘We all understand there’s high tides and all that, but every job you have to work around constraints.’’
Mr Cummins was not hopeful the pool would be open any time soon.
‘‘It’s hard to see it being finished before the end of January,’’ he said.
Dianne Ellis is another regular user of the pool, which she called ‘‘the heart of our village’’.
She had a simple message for the council: ‘‘All we want for Christmas are our pools back!’’
Budget blowout only part of the problem
Beachgoers knew the Austinmer pool project was doomed on Monday when a truck took the contractor’s heavy equipment away.
But many of the once-regular swimmers had had a sinking feeling about this project for many months.
Perhaps it was the way the pump was first placed up on the path between the pools, only to be washed in soon afterwards by waves.
Later, formwork was put in place for the concrete, but none was poured, and that evening waves washed the formwork away.
There were problems with the project’s scope from the start – before long the damage was discovered to be worse than thought, and the pipes joining the pool had asbestos, which needed to be removed.
The project cost pushed out from $500,000 to almost $700,000. Only $511,000 had been paid so far, council said.
Then there were the weeks of good low tides in July but few signs of any work being done.
Last month, a lifeguard had to rescue the pump hoses from being washed away by heavy seas.
The Mercury has been assured that the extra costs were ‘‘within the contingency’’ allowed for in the contract – such a wide margin of error being a function of the uncertainty in such a difficult job.
- BEN LANGFORD