Court bid brings huge CTICC nightmare

An urgent High Court application that could stop construction of the Cape Town International Convention Centre’s expansion for up to 10 months pending a review of the architectural tender, would rack up costs of at least R28 million and cause significant reputational damage to the new venue. With the current cost escalation of R5.49m per month of delay, any suspension of building work would significantly push up the costs and make the scheduled March 2017 opening unlikely, the Western Cape High Court heard on Monday. This will have a significant impact on bookings for international events, which are done three to five years in advance.

Most of the excavation and piling has been done on the site and construction is due to start so that the Cape Town International Convention Centre 2 (CTICC 2) can be ready for completion in July. But the urgent application by Gapp Architects and Stefan Antoni Olmesdahl Truen Architects against Convenco, the first respondent, and Makeka Design, Stauch Vorster Architects and Van der Merwe Miszewski Architects, as the CTICC 2 Architects’ Association, could put the R100m expansion on hold.Only Convenco, a municipal entity of the City of Cape Town, has opposed the application, which deals with the awarding of the architectural tender. The tender has been probed by the city’s forensic services department and the Public Protector, with both finding some irregularities.

Although the Convenco board resolved in 2013 it would not be viable to cancel the contract, the applicants now want the court to set aside the contract. But since work has started, to have the contract awarded to HLA-Gapp would only apply to stages four and five of the contract, which deals with the administration of the building work. According to court papers, the plans to expand the CTICC were conceived in 2006 and it was considered acceptable to allow the same team, which included Stauch Vorster Architects and Van der Merwe Miszewski Architects, to continue working on the project rather than put the expansion out to tender. These firms worked on the design of the CTICC between 1999 and 2003. But in November 2011 Convenco put the project out to tender, and the 19 submissions included the HLA-Gapp joint venture, and Makeka, Stauch Vorster Architects and Van der Merwe Miszewski Architects - as a joint venture.

Both made it through to the final adjudication stage. All of the bidders exceeded the R390m construction budget. Despite being penalised for budget non-compliance, HLA-Gapp won by a significant margin, but lost the tender to the CTICC 2 joint venture. Ismail Jamie, SC, for Convenco, said in court papers the recommendation of the Bid Evaluation Committee “was not its own” but an instruction by Rashied Toefy, then chief executive of the CTICC. “... the decision to award the tender was made because of the unwarranted and unauthorised dictates of Mr Toefy and was thus unconstitutional.” Toefy, having resigned as a member of this committee, “nevertheless intervened in its (reconvened) meeting of February 18, 2012 and advised the committee it was not permitted to recommend the tender be awarded to a joint venture between HLA-GAPP and the CTICC 2 Architects’ Association... Mr Toefy instructed the committee to award the tender to one party”.

Toefy was cleared of any wrongdoing by an independent hearing. The applicants argued on Monday that as Stauch Vorster Architects and Van der Merwe Miszewski Architects were involved with the bid specification committee, the CTICC 2 Architects’ Association should not have been allowed to bid for the architectural services contract. But the respondents noted that the Convenco board considered the recommendations of the city’s forensic investigation into alleged tender irregularities and resolved that it would not be in the best interests to have the tender award set aside.