NEWS RELEASE

21 March 2001

CLOSE SCRUTINY OF BRITOMART PROCESSES

Auckland City has commissioned Audit New Zealand to undertake a quality assurance exercise on the council’s Britomart transport interchange project, to ensure that all processes involved with the work of the Waitemata Waterfront Development Group are up to scratch.

And Auckland City already has a cost-benefit analysis underway, which it will submit to the Office of the Auditor General as a further check, said Waitemata Waterfront Development Working Party chair, Mayor Chris Fletcher.

Auckland City’s project managers chose to engage Audit New Zealand to conduct a review of the project plan and documentation and project governance structures several weeks ago, she said. They will now also be reviewing key elements in the cost-benefit report for presentation to the council in April.

“We have chosen to take the analysis to a further level of investigation because it is important to us that the process used to develop this interchange on the Britomart site is open and honest at every step.”

The WWD Working Party today also agreed to adopt a two-month lead-in to demolition of the downtown bus terminal, working with bus operators to make sure commuters are well informed about changes, well before they happen, she said. Formal notice of its demolition will be made at the end of this month.

“Once the old terminal comes down, transitional arrangements will come into effect which means that many commuters will be catching their regular bus from a different spot in the central city. We want them to be well informed, well before the changeover in mid-May.”

The next big step for the Working Party will be authorising demolition of the Britomart carpark building, programmed for June. This building is in a bad state of disrepair and barely operative, said Mrs Fletcher. “We are advised that it will have to be closed in three months anyway!”

ENDS

For more information, please contact:
The Mayor of Auckland City, Chris Fletcher, tel: 379 2020.

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