In a report to the audit finance and risk committee, council finance, legal and regulatory general manager Stewart Burns said at the end of December, the council had 383 capital projects, with an approved financial year 2022 adjusted budget of $226.7million — a $20.7million decrease from the 2021-22 annual plan budget.
Overall, the year-to-date spend was $79.4million, compared to the adjusted budget of $82.14million.
Included in the "high profile projects" were the shovel-ready $63million Queenstown town centre street upgrades, of which $35million was sourced from Crown Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and the $86.6million Queenstown town centre arterial (stage 1), which received $50million from CIP.
Committee member Bill Moran asked what risks there were across the capital projects, given the impact of Covid on the labour market, and construction industry.
Programme director Gareth Noble said the council was seeing increased cost to relocate "critical teams to Queenstown" from elsewhere in New Zealand, "because we don’t have local resources available".
In terms of supply chains and materials, however, property and infrastructure general manager Peter Hansby said the council was in a good position with two major contractors parties to the programme alliance agreement.
"The competition is incredibly hot in terms of bringing resources into the organisation ... and it is going to continue to be quite challenging."
Mr Noble said for the past three years the council had provided monthly reports to its contracts panel, providing a pipeline of work and advising when that would be going to market to ensure they could "put things in place to make sure they’re as resourced as they can be".
There was monitoring of resource demands and price escalations to enable the council to slow the programme, if necessary.
Council chief executive Mike Theelen said if the actual capital expenditure was compared to the adjusted budget, "we’re probably doing better than we’ve ever done".
"We’re very much in that delivery phase, so a lot of that delivery is externalised and we’re managing those relationships with the external contractors.
"My only regret is I don’t own a road cone company," he said.
