Sanral CEO, Nazir Alli, today had some very stern words for Outa and what he termed their continued denigration of the agency and the encouragement of lawlessness.

Alli was speaking at a briefing today held at Sanral’s Pretoria offices where the agency dispelled Outa’s previous report that stated that the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) was overpriced by 321% per kilometre.

Outa had said its report was based comparisons to studies from 11 other similar freeway/highway projects conducted in different countries around the world.

The report estimated that the true cost of the project should be no higher than R7 billion, which Outa said is significantly lower than the GFIP R17.9 billion price tag, an over-payment of R10.8 billion , i.e 152% in total.

Sanral said some of the reports could not be obtained as they weren’t available on the internet and that, although it had approached Outa in March to get a copy of their report on numerous occasions, the agency didn’t respond by the deadline Sanral had provided for the submission of the reports.

“This matter has gone to court five different times…so the question is, why is there such an [insistence] from this organisation called Outa to question and denigrate the integrity of Sanral,” Alli said.

“In terms of Outa’s own mandate, it has a responsibility towards the public to provide the factual basis for its allegations,” added Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona. “It has persistently failed to do so. It is self-servingly misrepresenting the position in support of its stance that the public should ignore civil summonses.”

Alex van Niekerk, project manager for the GFIP, said Outa’s document can be dismissed as early as its second page where it recorded that the Gauteng Freeway network consists “of approximately 185 kilometres”.

“The actual length is 201 km which undermines the veracity of all of the other figures quoted in the document which rely on the length of the Gauteng Freeway network,” Van Niekerk said.

Based on the infromation it could find, Sanral compiled its own report on the GFIP report, coming up with a number of interesting conclusions.

GFIP report an attack on Sanral’s integrity

Sanral alleges that the Outa GFIP is based on a non-scientific, non-engineering study and that the names and qualifications of the report’s researchers are not stated.

“Outa implies that Sanral is corrupt, incompetent and has colluded with the construction industry in their published ‘research’ report,” the agency said. “The perceptions created by Outa cannot be left unchallenged by Sanral because they are misleading the public, the media and current and potential investors.”

Studies used selective and used out of context

Sanral discredited a number of the studies used in Outa’s report.

“In the first case study referred to in the report [Nederland Impact Study of 2008], Outa confuses the unit of measurement. It incorrectly extracts construction costs in Europe and bases its calculations on these values in “millions” of Euros instead of the “billions” stated in this study. This constitutes an almost 100 000% error, Van Niekerk said.

The agency said that, based on Outa’s own calculation, but with the correct values inserted (billions not millions), the GFIP is 99.7% cheaper than the comparable European costs.

Moving on to the US Illinois Study 2004, Sanral said that this was an example that construction cost estimates in urban environments can’t be approached in the manner in which Outa conducted its supposed research.

“Without escalating the 2004 figure to 2010 [when the bulk of the GFIP project was nearing completion], and applying a R7 to $1 US exchange rate that was used by Outa, this case study derived cost amounts to R43 million per lane-kilometre,” said Van Niekerk.

“This is equivalent to R387 million per centre line-kilometre when applying the Outa arithmetic. Applying these numbers in the Outa calculation, the GFIP freeways were at least 77% cheaper than the relevant projects that should have been considered by Outa,” he added.

Sanral went on to say that the majority of the remaining case studies Outa cited in its report primarily compare rural roads in Africa and elsewhere in the world with the modern GFIP freeways. It said that these projects are not comparable as even Outa itself stated that one needs to compare “like with like”.

Of the nine other projects studied, Sanral said reports for three could not be found, two do not deal with new works or construction costs, one is not clear, another excludes certain costs and doesn’t list specific projects, and the last one does not relate to GFIP at all.

“The reports that contain reference studies have project cost ranges of up to 2 146%. The studies referred to by Outa show a range of 294% between the studies,” the Sanral report stated, “Based on this – Outa incorrectly determines a 321% over expenditure for the GFIP.”

Alli added that it was unfortunate no probes and questions were directed at Sanral at the time of Outa’s report release to validate whether or not any of the study claims were true or not.

“What they have done could be considered as a deliberate misrepresentation [of Sanral and the GFIP]… when no court in the country has found Sanral to be guilty of corruption as far as the GFIP is concerned,” he said.

“We need to question if there’s a different motive for Outa to do this as opposed to encouraging respect for the laws of our country,” Alli said. “What do they do instead? They encourage lawlessness.”