Negotiation ongoing for construction of CIT Woden

Major Projects Canberra chief projects officer Duncan Edghill said a preferred candidate had been selected from a tender process. As negotiations were still ongoing, Mr Edghill said he could not give a definitive timeline for the construction of the campus.

"We've identified a preferred respondent and we're in contract negotiations for the CIT facility itself but we haven't signed the contract for that package of work yet and consequently until we have done that, it's a little bit premature to take about the exact program dates," Mr Edghill told an annual report hearing on Tuesday.

The new CIT campus was expected to cost between $250 to $300 million when the plans were unveiled in 2019. The government wanted the campus to be ready for students in 2025.

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Works started late last year on a new public transport interchange, which is a component of the CIT campus. Those works resulted in the partial closure of Callam Street.

However, works on the CIT campus precinct have already taken a hit as there have been struggles around getting workers to undertake non-contestable utility works in the construction of a new public transport interchange - which is part of the campus.

"That is a project, particularly due to some of the utility movements there is pressure in that program," Mr Edghill said.

"When you've got a specialist work crew that needs to come down from Sydney to do the work they're both catching up in terms of the abundance of work in other jurisdictions but where those work crews are in quarantine or somebody gets sick it does impact their availability to come down to Canberra."

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