24 Nov 2018

City Rail Link were aware of RCR Tomlinson's difficulties

8:14 am on 24 November 2018

Auckland's City Rail Link company says it did a 'reasonable amount of due diligence' on a contracting firm's financial situation prior to its spectacular collapse this week.

City Rail Link work on Lower Queen St.

City Rail Link work on Lower Queen St. Photo: City Rail Link

RCR Tomlinson, one of Australia's oldest engineering businesses, on Thursday announced it had gone into administration, raising questions about what that means for this country's largest transport infrastructure project.

It's the parent company of RCR Infrastructure New Zealand, which last month was contracted by City Rail Link to work on a major portion of the Auckland underground network.

City Rail Link's chief executive, Sean Sweeney, said his company did know RCR Tomlinson had faced recent financial difficulty.

"We'd done a reasonable amount of due diligence on them and just like the rest of the market and their banks we were satisfied that they had identified the problem and they'd put in place measures to address the problem," said Mr Sweeney.

"What's happened since then is that there have been other projects that appear to have been causing them further problems."

Get the RNZ app

for ad-free news and current affairs