Media Response |

- City of Ballarat Director of Development and Planning Angelique Lush

Changes were needed to the original plans for the Civic Hall, which resulted in a number of variations to the construction contract.

These were due to the new requirements of the co-location with GovHub, which had not been announced when the original Civic Hall tenders were advertised, and the unknown conditions within a heritage building, which only become apparent once works start.

These variations were all within the overall project budget of $7.2 million.

The variation report referred to is a reporting procedure for individual contracts and their management.

It ensures Council has oversight on how contracts it awards vary from the original conditions, so that Council can ensure appropriate governance, transparency and best practice project management are being achieved.

The values reported in this document are for an individual contract – in this case the construction – and includes many smaller variations aggregated over the course of the contract (in this case more than 1 year). These figures relate to the contract only and do not reflect on the overall project budget.

This is normal procedure and Council is being very transparent with each contract variation budgeted for, approved by the council and reported publicly via a council meeting.

The Civic Hall has been another remarkable achievement by the builders, SJ Weir, in another heritage setting.