Manchester Council’s Executive will be asked to approve a £76m increase to the project to restore the Town Hall
The money will come from the council’s capital budget to be funded through long-term borrowing.
The original budget contained a significant amount of contingency funding – £49m – for unforeseen events.
Yet the scale and combined impact of unpredictable, and in some cases unprecedented, events beyond our control which have arisen in the last few years has meant that even this prudent buffer was not enough.
The project has been hit by the combined disruptive impacts of major external events such as the global Covid pandemic, hyperinflation in the construction industry and the war in Ukraine.
Further challenges have been discovered throughout the project. Although extensive survey work was carried out in advance, there are some issues which can only emerge once the project team reach previously inaccessible places – within the fabric of the building or at high-level.
These challenges range from minor obstructions and quirks from the original construction all the way through to structural issues which require design solutions before work can continue. Some hard-to-access parts of the building have been found to be in worse condition than originally anticipated, underlining the need for repair and restoration.
Work to repair and restore the building’s enormous roof has uncovered more than 120 separate issues which have required extra work and in many cases design solutions – from instances of rotten timbers being found to changes being required to original detailing which was letting in rainwater.
There have been 50 instances where the stonework was found to be in worse condition than originally anticipated and in need of repair.
Issues uncovered by holes being made for pipes, wires and ducts to provide essential services to the building have been responsible for a further 22 instances of delay.
Repair and restoration timescales are also being impacted by the challenge of ensuring that an intricate Victorian building meets stringent post-Grenfell fire safety standards.
Not only is there a construction industry-wide shortage of fire-certified products but the unique nature of the listed building means that off-the-shelf solutions cannot be employed and bespoke designs have to be developed.
For example, hundreds of existing heritage doors still need to be upgraded to achieve the level of fire resistance required to achieve modern safety standards. The upgrades required could not be determined until the doors were stripped of decades of paint and the original door construction examined.
However, the biggest cost of addressing these issues is not from the extra work and materials required but from knock-on impacts of delays, particularly financial claims from contractors whose workers have had to be temporarily stood down or remain on site for longer than originally envisaged. The Council is robustly negotiating more than 80 such claims to ensure a fair outcome.
The July 2023 update warned that the impact of delays to that point could push the completion date back by up to two years from its scheduled finish date in 2024. Despite the best efforts of the team to reduce the timescales, and given the ongoing challenges, the management contractors are currently forecasting a completion date in July 2026.
The project team of skilled craftspeople are now 75% of the way through the ‘construction’ phase
