Lismore City Council has appointed local company Bennett Constructions as the Managing Contractor for the next stage of the city’s recovery and rebuild.

Lismore City Council’s Chief Operating Officer Brendan Logan said following the February 2022 natural disaster, work to date had focused on emergency and immediate restoration works on all of Council’s buildings and facilities.

“After completing these works, Council is pleased to announce the appointment of Bennett Constructions as Managing Contractor to complete the next stage of the city’s rebuild,” he said.

More than 250 Council assets were damaged during the February 2022 natural disaster and the following month’s major flood. Estimates to date suggest the repair bill will top half a billion dollars.

“Bennett will design, manage, coordinate and deliver flood restoration works for the majority of the civic buildings that were damaged during the disaster,” Mr Logan said.

Bennett Constructions will know a lot of the assets very well, like the Lismore Town Hall, a building the company built in 1965, and then 50 years later, completed a major refurbishment and extension.

Mr Logan said the Managing Contractor delivery model differed from a simple Construct only model as it involves a two-stage arrangement where Council will pay Bennett for project development costs (scoping, design, procurement of subcontractors and cost estimation). This will be followed by an assessment of a proposal from Bennett for delivery of the construction scope.

“Council chose the delivery model to progress our next stage of the rebuild while we still confirm the full scope, risks, constraints and opportunities,” Mr Logan said.

“This model allows for maximum design flexibility while also providing greater oversight in monitoring the prices charged by subcontractors, in order to meet funding obligations with State and Federal governments.”

Mr Logan said subcontracting will be competitively tendered by the Managing Contractor. Selection of subcontractors will be done in consultation between Council and Bennett.

With so many assets that need to be rebuilt, how does council prioritise which assets are at the top of the list?

"We have a view here that we want to make sure that assets that have a significant social impact, things that are very important to the community, are restored as quickly as possible. Depending on which user group you ask, there's probably a view for all of them to be at the top of the list but in the end, we've got to make decisions on that. We literally are working on that today, I've got a meeting with our portfolio director this afternoon about how we take that one forward."

"We do want to get to that really quickly so we can tell the community, good or bad, there might be something they like to hear it might not but we just want to get it out there and let them know this is the way we're going to take those asset rebuilds on."

Funding is an area that can get very confusing. Last week it was announced that the Lismore Memorial Baths on Molesworth Street will get $1 million in funding to rebuild it, is that the same funding pool?

"The public will just see it is combined together but what that actually is in the background is two separate funding streams. The funding today, particularly around the Bennetts contract relates to just restoration of the asset or what we might call EPAR (Essential Public Asset Restoration) funding. That just allows you to restore things to how they were before but other funding has been applied for public assets that allow you to then do things with them that make them better, better than what they were 'Build Back Better'. So, they're separate funding streams that we have to apply for but in the end, it's our job to make sure we put them together and the public just gets something that was better than before."

With such an enormous amount of groundwork to be done, can we expect to see a start on the rebuild on some assets this year?

"It's still being scoped and we have to work out tendering process and all those things but I'd be hopeful that the process does commence this year, like physical works on the ground do commence this year, but it's certainly going to be the back half of the year, if we do get there."

As we are learning, a medium-term timeframe of 5 years to completion is likely for a lot of the Lismore rebuild not only for public assets but also house raisings and developing new areas to build and live. This proves the size and scale of our natural disaster has never been seen in Australia before.