Norwood Morialta High upgrades scaled back due to inaccurate costings

Adelaide’s most expensive school upgrade is being scaled back, with a major new addition axed after costings failed to stack up.

Artist’s impressions of planned upgrades to Norwood Morialta High School.

Adelaide’s most expensive school upgrade had to be scaled back, leading to the axing of a new gym, because inaccurate costings left it $6m over budget.

The consolidation of Norwood Morialta High on to a single campus, bringing its middle schoolers from Rostrevor to join the senior students on The Parade at Magill, is by far the biggest project in the State Government’s $1.3bn school infrastructure spend.

The centrepiece of the project is a new three-storey middle school building with a rooftop space.

The scope and cost had already increased last May from $40m to $52m with the addition of an “innovation hub” for arts, technology, home economics and music, among other improvements.

Artist’s impressions of planned upgrades to Norwood Morialta High School.

Artist’s impressions of planned upgrades to Norwood Morialta High School.

But an Education Department document, dated last September and uncovered by Opposition education spokesman Blair Boyer under Freedom of Information laws, shows that blew out to $58m.

“The project has had persistent issues related to a misalignment of budget and scope,” it says. “Inaccurate costings prepared early in the life cycle are the main cause.”

The document, signed by Education Minister John Gardner, shows instead of a new gym, the old one will have “minor works” including airconditioning added and changerooms upgraded, saving $3.85m.

It also says $1m could be shaved off the total project cost by reducing “the refurbishment scope in existing buildings”, among other savings measures. Sticking with plans for a new gym would “put at risk” the capacity to deliver the “required number” of teaching spaces in the innovation hub, the document says.

Artist’s impressions of planned upgrades to Norwood Morialta High School.

Artist’s impressions of planned upgrades to Norwood Morialta High School.

Mr Boyer said the co-location, at the same time as adding Year 7s to the school next year – raising projected enrolments from about 1500 to 1850 – “has been fraught with problems and cost blowouts”.

“The management of the school building project is of particular concern,” he said.

Three years’ worth of estimated operational savings from consolidating on a single campus, totalling $1.4m, was approved as extra funds for the project, taking the total budget to $53.4m.

Education Minister John Gardner said the former Labor government’s plan for the school had been a “much smaller” $30m upgrade, “with only $15m in new money and $15m that required the sale of the middle (school) campus for a housing development”.

“It is a new level of hypocrisy for Labor to now complain about the final scope of this excellent project,” he said.

The upgrade is scheduled to be ready for the start of the 2022 school year.