Botched $5.5 million fire station closed after just one year
A $10 MILLION court fight is raging over a botched $5 million Melbourne fire station that shut after just one year.
A FIRE brigade is in a $10 million dogfight with architects and builders because of a $5.5 million botched station, which closed after just one year.
A structural fault meant the concrete slab underneath the new station in Glen Iris, Melbourne was unable to support a fire truck’s weight. It has now been demolished.
“As it was explained to me, the engineer said some of these structures wouldn’t have stood up in a strong storm,” local deputy chief officer, Alan Quinton told Leader, earlier this year.
However, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) and the architects they’re suing have taken to the Supreme Court and a fierce legal battle is unfolding over who is to blame for the mess.
Now court filings, revealed by The Age, show that MFB want $10 million to cover the costs of the embarrassing saga.
The documents reportedly show costs of more than $2.4 million for a temporary fire station it has rented in Malvern, $1 million for the engineers Meinhardt, which found the faults, and other consultants hired when the works went wrong, and $6.6 million for the demolition and construction of the new fire station now being built on the site.
The fire service hired respected design firms Architectus, which spent two years designing and documenting its plans for the new state-of-the-art centre that, the then-chief executive Nick Easy promised would be “modern and efficient”.
The other player in the mammoth court case, which began in May last year, is the Commercial Industrial Construction Group (CICG), which the fire brigade contracted to build the station. With Architectus overseeing them, the group began work on the failed project in 2014.
The Age reports that CICG defence largely blames Architectus for getting the designs wrong.
It is reportedly demanding $82,000 more from the fire brigade for work it did and it wants a $250,000 bond it gave the brigade before it started the job.
United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall told Leader the debacle demonstrated the “sheer incompetence” of the MFB.
“This is a public institution that is charged with protecting life and property and ensuring the safety of the residents in their fire district,” he said.
“It certainly illustrates the mismanagement of the fire services.”
However, MFB said there was nothing new to add since the court case began last year.
An Architectus spokesman said: “While the matter remains in the hands of legal parties, all we can say at this point in time is the claims are engineering and construction-related and that multiple parties are involved.
“Due to the ongoing proceedings, we are not in a position to provide any further detail at this stage.”
News.com.au contacted Commercial Industrial Construction Group for comment — but so far no response has been given.