Streetcar named perspire

[colinw]

Oh dear!    How do they come up with these headlines?

(Adelaide) Sunday Mail: Streetcar named perspire - click here.

Streetcar named perspire

RENATO CASTELLO | From: Sunday Mail (SA) | October 24, 2010 12:00AM

COMMUTERS will sweat through another summer on Adelaide's trams because TransAdelaide does not know how to operate or repair airconditioners it paid more than $4 million to install, court documents show.

As late as May, TransAdelaide did not have service and repair manuals to ensure the 33 airconditioners - installed in the 11 Bombardier Flexity trams last year - could "operate properly in the future", Supreme Court files reveal.

The manufacturer of the units, SA-based company MooreAir, warned Transport Minister Patrick Conlon four months ago the trams would experience an "embarrassing number" of faults this summer because of a lack of maintenance expertise within TransAdelaide.

The revelations have emerged in Supreme Court documents filed in a civil claim brought against the TransAdelaide by MooreAir for an alleged breach of contract.

In 2009, TransAdelaide contracted the Camden Park-based company to design and install prototype airconditioners in its Bombardier fleet because the trams' existing German-made units could not cope with Adelaide's extreme heat.

MooreAir, which completed the $4.25 million project in October, is suing TransAdelaide, for failing to deliver promised bonus payments and an exclusive 10-year maintenance contract in reward for fixing the airconditioning before summer. In his affidavit, managing director Robert Moore has also accused TransAdelaide of breach of confidence by delivering one of MooreAir's airconditioning units to a rival company, Sydney-based Sigma Coachair, in July without his approval.

He alleges that by doing so, Sigma had been given access to confidential MooreAir designs. In a June 30 letter, filed in the court, Mr Moore alerted Mr Conlon to the alleged contract breach and warned him of an "impending embarrassing outcome" over tram maintenance.

"TransAdelaide is looking to employ their own technicians and other contractors plus ourselves to perform the required works of repairing and maintaining these units," he wrote.

"These technicians will be unable to achieve the required results without the flexability (sic) and innovation of the experienced MooreAir team.

"By summer 2011, you will have an embarrassing number of airconditioner faults that are beyond these technicians."

Court documents show that on May 17, 2010, TransAdelaide invited Sigma Coachair's general manager, Timothy Mamo, to inspect the MooreAir units because of concerns from TransAdelaide's trams engineering manager, Peter Haskard, that the units had caused "considerable stuffiness" and that a number of passengers had fainted on hot days.

A spokesman for Transport Minister Patrick Conlon said that MooreAir continued to provide services for Flexity airconditioning when required

MooreAir is seeking unspecified damages, with the case listed for another hearing on February 3, 2011.