This school was built to a standard Department design that has been successfully used throughout the country over a 15-year period. The architectural service for this project was provided by my Department's professional and technical staff.
The particular difficulty in this case related to the exceptional and unpredictable local wind factors on site rather than poor workmanship from the contractors and therefore the issue of pursuing a claim against the contractor did not arise. The building contractor, the roofing sub-contractor and the roof tile supplier tried various solutions, at no cost to the State, to deal with the leaks at the school in question. However, none of these proved to be a sustainable solution given the wind factors.
The total cost of designing and building this new school was €953,059.93. This amount is made up of payments of €831,765.55 to the building contractor, €60,769.73 to the external members of the design team for quantity surveying and engineering services, €58,747.02 for furniture and equipment and €1,777.63 for development charges to Castlebar UDC. The cost of the re-roofing project was €155,611.99.
