That is what Minister Mark Harbers (VVD) of Infrastructure and Water Management writes in a letter that was sent to the House of Representatives on Friday evening.
What should have been a festive week (the Afsluitdijk will be 90 years old next Saturday) is now starting with a serious hangover. Harbers’ predecessor Cora van Nieuwenhuizen already allocated 120 million euros last year to absorb setbacks in the prestigious project. Harbers now has to pay another 238 million to settle a dispute with construction consortium Levvel (BAM, Van Oord, Rebel) about additional work.
But the debacle turns out to be even bigger than expected. The work on the discharge sluices, both on the North Holland and Frisian side of the dyke, will be removed from the contract and put out to tender again, Harbers writes. It is unclear when that job will be completed and how much it will cost.
Due to all the setbacks and future uncertainties about price increases for materials and labour, the total budget for the renovation of the Afsluitdijk and the maintenance of the flood defense system for 25 years must be increased to more than 2 billion euros. When the mega job was awarded in 2018, it was estimated that 921 million would be enough.
Rijkswaterstaat pleaded guilty; the builders are making a profit
De Volkskrant revealed on Friday that Rijkswaterstaat already knew in May 2018, almost a year before work started, that the service had overlooked crucial information about water levels and wave heights. ‘This had a major impact on the planning and finances of the project,’ says Harbers.
From documents that de Volkskrant obtained by invoking the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob), it appears that Rijkswaterstaat stuck itself by acknowledging guilt for its own omission. According to Rijkswaterstaat, the Levvel construction consortium (BAM and Van Oord) tried to save money from the mea culpa by attributing all the additional work to the dyke to that one mistake and by adopting an adamant attitude.
The minister now pretends that the festering conflict between Rijkswaterstaat and the builders for three years has been settled to the satisfaction of all those involved. But the parties are not yet completely settled: there is still disagreement about 87 million euros. A Committee of Experts will judge this, probably not until next year. Such a dispute procedure was already announced last year by Harbers’ predecessor Cora van Nieuwenhuizen (VVD), but it turned out that it had not been initiated.
Construction company BAM, which negotiated the additional costs with maritime contractor Van Oord with Rijkswaterstaat, now speaks of a ‘constructive dialogue’. The listed company will not suffer any additional financial damage, BAM reassures shareholders.
House of Representatives is concerned, expertise is gone at Rijkswaterstaat
CDA Member of Parliament Harry van der Molen wants a plenary debate about what he calls a ‘worrying pattern’ in major infrastructure works: the government as client makes mistakes, construction companies ‘gamble on reimbursing additional costs’ in order to ‘get things done financially’. ‘. According to him, the House is also systematically informed too late and incompletely.
D66 MP Lisa van Ginneken endorses the concerns of the CDA. ‘Our monitoring task becomes very difficult if a ministry withholds information.’ She also wants Harbers to be open about training the provision of information to the press. ‘It really gives me a stomach ache. The press must also be able to control.’
Experts blame Rijkswaterstaat’s blunder on the decline of the organization. Thousands of workers, mainly technical, disappeared because that knowledge could be left to ‘the market’. Van Ginneken speaks of ‘a great risk’. Referring to the Afsluitdijk debacle: ‘These are mistakes that really hurt financially.’
Last week, the Court of Audit was also extremely critical of (tenders by) Rijkswaterstaat. Projects are started for which there is not enough budget in advance, and the planning is left to external parties. Moreover, if everything gets out of hand, accountability and an analysis of setbacks are often not forthcoming. ‘What does the minister learn from this? We assess these shortcomings as a risk to the financial management of infrastructure projects.’
Vice-President Herman Tjeek Willink already criticized Rijkswaterstaat in the 2005 annual report of the Council of State: ‘Due to the outsourcing of more and more tasks, substantive expertise has been greatly reduced.’