The new municipal headquarters complex project aims to achieve massive cost effectiveness and productivity goals for the City’s service delivery management.

THE project has its genesis in the Munitoria fire of 3 March 1997 which among other effects led to massive fragmentation of the City’s governance and service delivery management structures into more than a dozen CBD office buildings that continue to hamper service delivery cost effectiveness.

After several false starts, when it became clear that the City did not have either the capital budget capacity or the technical capacity to build and operate a state of the art new facility on its own, the City adopted the PPP model first experienced by the City in its partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) to build its new headquarters campus in Sunnyside as a model not only of state of the art government office complex design, but as a tool for socio-economic development.

The new Tshwane House municipal headquarters complex project is also both a new building project and a CBD regeneration project that will not only achieve massive cost effectiveness and productivity goals for the City’s service delivery management, but also generate economic redevelopment outcomes for the CBD in particular, for the whole city generally.

The City is thus buying not just a building but a specified set of socio-economic development outcomes adding value which far exceeds the nominal asset value of a new government office building considered as an island unto itself.

The current Tshwane House Municipal HQ project was registered with National Treasury as a PPP, a step called the inception phase in December 2004, with the City then committed to a carefully monitored regulatory oversight process designed to ensure that the interests of the people of Tshwane would be sustainably served by the project in both the short and long term.

In simple terms as set out in Section 120 of the Municipal Finance Management Act the project must demonstrate at each step that it will: be affordable, will provide value for money and that it will transfer appropriate risk to the private sector PPP partner who will not only design, build and life cycle operate the building, but will provide the upfront capital resources to build it.

The City will then pay the private partner an annual payment, comparable to a house bond payment, that will both buy and furnish the building, then operate it, giving it back to the City in certified as new condition at the end of 25 years.

While the new Tshwane House complex as such is expected to cost around R2bn including 25 years of full service operation, the follow on value add created within the precinct and extended CBD is expected to rise to several billion more by private sector.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ngobeni has continued to crack down on corrupt officials within the Municipality with the suspension of six senior managers who have been implicated in maladministration in the bus service division.

“The result of a forensic investigation in the transport department has led to the suspension this week of six senior managers in the bus service division. At least 16 fraud cases have been opened against the officials,” he said.

He admitted that the City's bus service was faced with problems and said a workshop meeting will be held over the weekend to try to get to the root-cause of the problems within the bus service division.

Regarding the removal of animal carcasses in the City, he said the Municipality recently held talks with the service provider who was appointed in August 2011. According to the new tender, the service provider, Izwilakhe Construction and Projects is responsible for impounding of unhealthy animals and carcass removal.

Source: Tshwane