Opinion | Kusile and Medupi were destined to fail from the start
Poor planning, poor design, contractor claims — a single tender for an engineering, procurement and construction contract could have avoided all theseKusile and Medupi power stations continue to come under fire as poorly managed and ill-designed, remaining years behind completion dates amid drastically rising costs that now stand at R300bn by conservative estimates.
In 2011, the Export–Import Bank of the US approved an $805.6m loan to Eskom to finance a US-based company to be their execution partner on Kusile to provide planning; engineering and design services; construction and contracts management; claims and procurement management; and health and safety management services.
Yet as delays began to creep into Kusile, the sequence of work backed up , and a number of contractors found themselves unable to access the site on their contractually agreed start dates. The contractors were entitled to begin charging Eskom from stipulated start dates, regardless of whether the work had been initiated.
Insufficient stakeholder management eventually led to labour unrest; yet another project shortcoming that had expensive and time-consuming consequences. If roles and responsibilities are not absolutely outlined in comprehensive contracts, grey areas can lead to disaster. As deputy president David Mabuza told parliament recently, the contracts for both Kusile and Medupi were poorly structured. The result was that Eskom had to carry the cost of overruns and frequent delays in the building of the two vast power plants with no penalties leveled at the partners.
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