Public Works Minister Trevor Moniz has dismissed suggestions that upgrade work to Heritage Wharf will cost $6 million more than originally estimated.Mr Moniz was grilled by Opposition MPs in the House of Assembly on Friday night after he revealed Government had set aside $28 million for the upgrades — despite earlier claims the work would cost just over $22 million.But yesterday Mr Moniz explained that, although $28 million had been budgeted for the work, “there is no requirement for the Government to spend the entire budget”.And he said the $28 million bill also covered other improvements at Dockyard not related to the wharf, including costs for an investigation into the structural integrity of Kings Wharf, and a ground transportation area passenger management study.“The budget was allocated for the whole project to cover the costs of engineering the solution, construction works as well as complying with the various requirements,” Mr Moniz said in a statement.The Minister pointed out that, so far, Government has spent less than $20 million on the work, which began in March and is expected to continue through the summer.He added that estimates now put the final cost of the Heritage Wharf upgrades at around $23.85 million.“Funding is also being provided for long-term environmental monitoring, a broad-reaching transportation study and landscaping and shading facilities in the ground transportation area in accordance with the conditions of this planning application and the previous planning application that were not met,” Mr Moniz said.“As you would expect with a project of this size where the works were undertaken under severe time constraints we have also allowed a contingency in our budgeting. This contingency will be used to pay for those items listed above which were not fully identified at the budget stage as well as any other unforeseen construction delays and costs all of which will be fully identified in the final accounts.“This contingency makes up the difference of the total of the costs listed above and the budget of $28 million. We are presently forecast to be within this budget and we hope to remain so.“It should be noted however that the full extent of repair works to Heritage Wharf and the surrounding area has not yet been determined or costed. The budget was derived from the known structural and other deficiencies at the time and ongoing investigations may or may not reveal more defects to the Wharf that must be put right. Any such additional information will be made available once it has been verified and clearly quantified.”Providing a progress report on the upgrades, Mr Moniz said: “We have made good progress on the northern mooring dolphin over the past week, the majority of the lower 120ft pile lengths are now in and four of the extensions have been welded to make these 180 — 200ft in length.“This variance in length is because we have different lengths of cut-off pile from the earlier works that we are reusing and also the fact that the design pile lengths vary. The structural modelling of the dolphins is complex and each pile acts differently depending on how the ship pushes or pulls on the wharf."By the end of next week we should have most of the piles in the northern dolphin driven to toe level or deeper. Generally we are aiming for 180 feet down which means that we are setting the piles in the volcanic rock below the Bermuda Stone deposits that can contain cave features even at great depth. Scheduling of the concrete pours in mid to late June is in progress.”