Mike Barns, who took on the programme director role in February 2020, says he was replaced with no explanation in June 2022 by Tony Lloyd, who has now also been replaced in the role
Mr Barns, an experienced health infrastructure boss, said changing the expert leadership of a complex project "doesn’t make a lot of sense logistically, from a project delivery point of view".
"That is my job — to deliver projects and manage stakeholders along the way. The right time to build the project is now."
When asked why he was replaced with Mr Lloyd in 2022, he said he was just told he was being taken off the job and Mr Lloyd was replacing him.
"I just accepted it. If other people in the hierarchy make another decision, then that is their call."
"We did a lot of joining together of the subcontractor fraternity and the main contractor. There was a lot of trust built between the two layers of construction."
The project is the responsibility of Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora (HNZ), which announced on Wednesday that it was bringing in Crown Infrastructure Delivery (CID) to work on the inpatient building.
CID is a Crown-owned company being mandated to help agencies with low infrastructure delivery capability.
Multiple sources confirmed that Mr Lloyd had been shifted out from the build’s leadership. CID said it was providing a project director.
CID has never worked on a hospital project before or a project of this scale. Both Mr Barns and Mr Lloyd have health infrastructure expertise.
Mr Barns, now programme director at WSP, was responsible for the North Shore Hospital campus development in Auckland and previously worked on hospital builds in Cairo, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including the 700-bed New Al Ain Hospital in Abu Dhabi.
Mr Lloyd worked on the acute services building at Christchurch Hospital and on Greymouth Hospital.
Yesterday, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop was in Queenstown and said the Dunedin hospital build was an "extremely complex" project in a mess.
He pointed the finger of blame at former Cabinet minister Pete Hodgson, who led a committee in the past providing governance advice on the build.
Mr Hodgson had earlier this week accused HNZ of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic rather than getting on with the build.
Mr Bishop said he was "a bit sick of Pete Hodgson throwing rocks from the side".
"He is partly responsible for the mess we are in in the first place. I am not going to take any advice from Pete Hodgson when it comes to hospital construction."
Mr Hodgson responded: "I regret Minister Bishop has decided to resort to personal attacks. The build is now seven years’ old and all we have to show for the main inpatient building are some piles. Throughout, all the sources of delay have been central — none locally."
In September, Mr Bishop and Health Minister Shane Reti announced the inpatient building was being reconsidered and the two options were a smaller build or a refurbishment of the decaying ward block.
Mr Bishop said yesterday the government had yet to receive advice from HNZ but an announcement could be expected "soon".
Mr Hodgson said the September announcement was "probably the most foolhardy of them all and will undoubtedly cause costs to rise and further delays. Now they [HNZ] have nobody on their side who has built a hospital before. It has become absurdly dysfunctional ... just incredible."
