Hoima City stadium design & build project – Lessons for Uganda

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OPINION

By Arch. Kenneth Ssemwogerere, PhD

President Yoweri Museveni will inaugurate the brand-new stadium on the eve of Christmas – what better day to gift Ugandans with such a great gift for Christmas! It’s always said that it seems impossible until it’s done! This is quite the case for the Hoima City Stadium Design & Build project (HCSDB). It’s a new dawn for the Uganda Construction industry that a contractor of a government project can promise and deliver a project ahead of time, to the highest level of quality and within the agreed contract sum. As such, this is no mean achievement and so cannot go unnoticed and above all, without us learning our lessons and seeking to do things differently.

The HCSDB contract was signed on 7th June 2024 between Government of Uganda represented by M/S National Council of Sports, and M/S SUMMA TURIZM YATIRIMCILIGI ANONIM SIRKET, a company incorporated under the laws of the Republic of Turkey. The Contract was to Design and Build of Hoima City Stadium at Hoima City with a contract price of United States Dollars One Hundred Thirty Million and to be completed in 18 months.

The Main components of the project included a 20,000-seater stadium with Athletic track; 2,000-seater Multi-Sport Indoor Stadium; 25 Meter Semi-Olympic Size Swimming Pool; Outdoor stadia (Basketball/Netball, Volleyball/Badminton); Open and Closed Car Park (1,000 cars); Spectator Piazza; Related Infrastructure Works within the site boundary (Electricity, Water, ICT, Sewerage/wastewater treatment plant); Exterior Works (Hard scaping and Soft

Unlike the conventional way of doing construction projects of this scale, where procurement is made of the consultancy team which designs and submits to council; obtains approved plans, then the contractor procurement process ensures; in the design and build DB, one procurement is made of the Design and Build Contractor. Ideally, it comes as a full package where the contractor comes with his design consultancy team. This implies that all the design and its construction report to the contract manager. The design work proceeds in tandem with construction on approval of the Employer's engineer.

Now the question arises - how then does all this happen? The first rule of thumb for DB contract is what is a document called the Employer's Requirements ER. In this document, the Employer, in this case the Government of Uganda, must come up with a Statement of requirements that the DB contractor studies and provides a quotation at how much to do the project.

On the HCSDB project, the Ministry of Works & Transport, who are given their mandate as the advisor of the Government on all infrastructure projects, prepared a comprehensive ER for the project. Credit goes to the Leadership of the Ministry of Education and Sports MOES, who made the firm decision that the Government shall not hire an external consultant to prepare the ER, but that the MOWT be facilitated to tap into the expertise of their team to generate these ERs.

With this decision, we have seen enormous real capacity building for the country. We commend the MOWT together with the National Council of Sports, plus MOES teams and all persons who worked tirelessly to generate a competent ER document. The level of commitment and professionalism displayed at the week’s retreat when these ERs were prepared was commendable.

Critical to note is that it does not end with the ER, the Employer must deploy a lethal negotiation team to engage and face off with the DB contractor. Ideally, this is because at the time of negotiation, the technical drawings were only 5% developed and as such were only providing an idea of what was to be built. Therefore, the use of experienced people in technical fields like Architecture & engineering is a game-changer.

In the DB contracts, efforts must be made to get a contractor that has ‘been there done it’. This is because the road map to executing a DB project can be akin to doing a PhD, where you are expected to know the final product and its standard, but the process of getting there is heavily fogged.

Commendation goes to the persons within government who spotted SUMMA from our neighbours, Rwanda, where he had set such a great track record on DB projects like the Kigali Convention Centre, the Radisson Blu hotel; the Kigali Arena and in terms of sports, the upgrading of the Amahoro Stadium.

The lesson to learn here is that all people involved in Government DB contracts must be able to do a thorough due diligence on the proposed DB contractor. With such contractor, the Employer derisks the project almost 85% as there will be no surprises, as the DB are like ‘walk in the dark’ not knowing what will unfold when and how.

Once the contract had been signed, the contractor was required to mobilise his team plus equipment, which he did and as such, the very first site meeting was held on August 21, 2024, at which the contractor declared that their completion date was 31^st December 2025. Now that the Contractor has delivered the project earlier than the set completion date and having been part of the supervising consultancy team that witnessed all unfold, I would like to share some critical lessons for various stakeholders and institutions.

To start with is with Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies MDAs – to learn to work as teams and no longer in silos. During the Hoima project every MDA did their part. There was such resolve from each MDA to execute their part to the best of their knowledge and ability. Space will not be enough to enumerate all the bodies that worked as a team throughout the Hoima project off course led by the First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports.

The level of commitment of Maama to the CHAN/AFCON project is unprecedented. His Excellency, The President’s resolve to see that CHAN/AFCON project is well financed was indeed he impetus to this project success. It should be on record that the President and Maama presided over a meeting on exactly a year ago 24^th December 2024 at which the H.E. directed that funds for the project be found.

Armed with this support at the highest level in the land, the seriousness trickled down to everyone who was involved on this project. This shows that once all Government entities come to see one vision – delivery of the project, projects can be delivered in record time. Critical to mention that the entire $130m contract sum was financed by the Government of Uganda, and these funds were budgeted in only two financial years 2024/25 and 2025/26. This implies that if Government funds are all put to good use, this nation will experience unprecedented infrastructure development in just a few years with NO need for any foreign funding.

The second lesson - selection of such an experienced contractor like SUMMA. From experience, many contractors submit impressive documents at bid stage with great strategies and then during execution start to raise all sorts of excuses. Our detailed analysis that explains how SUMMA was able to pull off such a project revealed that the company has set up a sort of ‘conveyor belt’ system where each person working on the project is on standby waiting for their time to deliver. SUMMA has set up a system where they work with only the BEST in every area of project specifications and procurement.

To start with, they employed this design firm, Yazgan Design Architects in Ankara, a firm of more than 20 years of experience in the design of sports complexes. Our interaction with them at the Design meetings revealed the level of commitment and design competence they displayed was just it. The advantage that comes with such a firm is that the submission from the DB contractor is quite comprehensive, and so the comments and approvals don’t take long, hence leading to the ability to stick within the 72 hours in the contract allowed for review of submissions by the Employer's Engineer/ Project manager.

Another level of superiority displayed by SUMMA was the scale of their Construction campsite and setup at the start of the project in August 2024. The contractor’s camp had a large-scale office with various departments; setting up of a batching plant; a medical Center; accommodation, fully fully-fledged staff dining hall and kitchen; a gym for staff relaxation.  Having been given an advance of 30% of the contract sum, we saw how well the contractor put to use the funds, which included upfront ordering of materials and equipment; downpayment to suppliers etc. The lesson for our local contractors is to learn to first craft their contracts with the right requirements for advance payment and second is to put to good use those funds once received.

The third lesson goes to the DB consultants on projects. The level of professionalism displayed by the Project consultants working under SUMMA was impressive. This was displayed through first the deployment of experienced staff, second, willingness to listen, appreciate and then incorporate comments received from the Employer’s team. There were off-course moments of disagreement and sometimes rough exchanges, but all for the good of the project.

The end goal was to make sure that we come up with a great project, and this is what has been achieved. Advice now goes to the Employer's Engineer and contracts management team – the DB contractor must appreciate, from the very start, that the team deployed by the Employer understands their trade pretty well or else as a DB contractor with an experienced design team, they can easily take over the whole project with little or no input from the Employer's engineer. Thanks go to the MOWT team that put up a commendable fight for the Hoima project to come out this way.

The last lesson goes to the construction industry as a whole and to such governing bodies like the Architects Registration Board ARB; the Engineers Registration Board ERB as well as the Surveyors Registration Board SRB. The successful execution of Hoima as a DB contract now brings into question whether the DB contract method should not be embraced wholly by the industry.

The days for the Architect to design whatever they think is nice and fancy and not mind about buildability, economics and how long it takes to be completed are running out fast. Discussions should start among the professional fraternities on how our code of ethical conduct can guide - how a registered practising Architect can perform the role of a contractor in a DB contract.

The writer is Architectural Team Lead, Hoima City Stadium Project