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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3551 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
Mr Madden found that the company had been given some early information that the demolition project was to be reactivated in late 1996, after a period in abeyance. A meeting to discuss the project was arranged for 11 December 1996, and the company attended, carrying a draft works program it had prepared. Project Coordination was the only company to attend the meeting.
It is worth emphasising that, before any selection of a project manager had been made, one company had met with those responsible for letting the contract and had drafted a works program. At a subsequent meeting, on 13 December, attended by the most senior representatives of Totalcare and the ACT Government and ostensibly called for the purpose of evaluating competing claims for the job, the Government's representative brought with him a letter appointing the company as project manager. As the coroner remarked, this subsequent meeting had all the hallmarks of simply rubber-stamping the earlier decision to appoint them. As Mr Madden remarked:
The meetings of 11th and 13th December 1996 leave me with a great deal of concern. It is hard to gauge the genuineness of those involved in the appointment process. The meetings have all the hallmarks of a sham arrangement convened simply to lend credibility to the appointment process. The impression is one of a rubber stamp process. None of the persons involved with Totalcare or Project Coordination had any ability, knowledge, appreciation, understanding or experience as to the magnitude of the project yet they were making final conclusive decisions some four to five months before the tender process had been finalised.
But that was not the end of Mr Madden's criticism of the appointment of Project Coordination. The company, he found, was quite a suitable appointment in the early stages of the project, that is, the necessity to erect a fence urgently, but the appointment was continued past the initial stage "without any form of review which is unsatisfactory particularly as Project Coordination did not have any relevant experience in implosion demolition".
Other candidates simply were not considered, some because they were not pre-qualified with Totalcare. Mr Madden found:
The inevitable inference that can be drawn from all this is that Project Coordination on any objective view of the evidence would appear to have been in some favoured position for its appointment.
Favoured indeed! According to the coroner, Project Coordination's performance was inept. It did not fulfil its responsibilities and it was deficient, to the extent that the coroner recommended:
The Government ought not be making any appointment of Project Coordination to any future projects until clearly satisfied the company and its Board fully understand the nature of their appointment in both fact and law.
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