So, five o’clock on Friday afternoon, it was announced that the big new Metro Sports Facility in Christchurch isn’t going to be finished anytime soon.

This is the massive building which, at the moment, looks like a stage at an outdoor rock concert. It’s looked like that for a while, actually.

So much so, that - to me anyway - it’s looked like not much progress has been made for quite some time.

And, as it turns out, not much has been happening and the completion date has been pushed out another two years. Originally, it was going to be finished by the end of last year - but it’s now expected to be finished in late 2024 and open to the public in early 2025. By that time, it will be 14 years since the February 2011 earthquake.

Which is worth noting because the Metro Sports Facility is one of the big anchor projects that Gerry Brownlee had in his blueprint for the city’s earthquake recovery back in the day.

There was also the Te Pae convention centre, which opened a year ago. Late. The bus interchange - which was one of the first cabs off the rank. So too was the Margaret Mahy Playground and the Justice Precinct.

The stadium is the other big one - and who knows when we’ll be rocking up to watch games there. In fact, I try not to even think about that because, then, you just start to think about all the other things that have been delivered way-later than first anticipated.

And the Metro Sports facility - or the Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre, as it’s also known - is on the list. And as we now know, as of 5pm on Friday, it’ll be more than two years before anyone’s jumping in the pools, riding the hydroslides and using all the other facilities.

When it is done, it will be magnificent. But I do wonder whether there are so many other new pools either built or yet-to-be built in Christchurch, that it’ll be a bit like the central city and people will really need to be encouraged to come into town to use the big new facility.

But we don’t need to worry about that, just yet. Because that battle is more than two years away.

The outfit building the Metro Sports Facility is Otakaro - the government agency that delivered the convention centre.

I thought its explanation for the reason behind this latest delay was pretty telling. This was in the media release that came out at 4:59 on Friday afternoon.

Here’s what its chief executive John Bridgman said: “With its high water table, this site was always going to be a geographically perfect but geologically tough location to put a 5-metre

diving pool down into, and there has been a small amount of subsidence around one of the dewatering wells.”

Which means it’s a great part of town to have a facility like this one, but the land there isn’t so great. Which, in some respects, was always going to happen when the only reason it’s being built where it is, is because the Government back in 2011 was all about a blueprint design for the central city as part of the earthquake recovery.

And we had Gerry Brownlee and the rest of them wanting pretty pictures and a vision for what the new Christchurch would look like.

Which, of course, made sense back then - because we all needed a vision to hold onto and give us hope, didn’t we? But, as John Bridgman from Otakaro is saying, maybe the site chosen for the Metro Sports Facility wasn’t the best because when you start digging down five metres to put in a diving pool, you strike problems.

And the problem here, as we heard on Friday, is subsidence.

The other thing in Otakaro’s statement that caught my eye was John Bridgman’s comment about what this all means for costs and the budget.

He says while construction will take longer to complete, they have a fixed-price contract with the contractor and “any variations beyond the $317m already allocated will be worked through and agreed on with the contractor at a later date".

Now, look, I’m no construction expert - but how can you say you’ve got a fixed-price contract with the contractor in one breath, but then say any variations will be worked through with the contractor at a later date.

That doesn't sound like a fixed-price to me.

At this stage, $317 million is due to be spent on the facility. The Government’s putting in money, so too is the Christchurch City Council. The council’s contribution is capped - but let’s not hold our breath on that one.

In fact, let’s not hold our breath on the whole thing. But it raises the question, doesn’t it, as to whether or not we are any good here in New Zealand at delivering big infrastructure projects.

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