THE troubled £130m upgrade of Scotland's supreme courts has suffered a fresh setback after failing to find a company willing to take on the construction work.
The Parliament House project on Edinburgh's Royal Mile was snubbed for being too complex, risky and time-consuming.
Or, in other words, the construction industry has better things to do. Like this, for example, reported in The Guardian:
The construction company that will build the Olympic stadium has priced the job at more than double the budget planned when London was awarded the Games.
London's bid book quoted a £280m cost for the stadium but Sir Robert McAlpine, the Olympic Development Authority's preferred bidder, says the cost will be more like £630m. The government and the ODA have conceded that to build an arena capable of downsizing from an 80,000-seat showpiece to a 25,000-capacity athletics venue after the Games would inflate the original price, but still envisaged a final cost of no more than £400m.
According to a report in today's Construction News, the ODA will have to either scale down its ambitions for the stadium or re-negotiate its terms. It quotes a source close to the negotiations saying: "McAlpine is in a very strong position because it knows the ODA can't let them walk away because it would be a public-relations disaster for the Games.
It does not seem to have taken very long for the ODA to find itself spread-eagled over a barrel.
Nor does this story in The Scotsman seem likely to have a happy ending and there may be serious consequences for Scottish shipyards:
THE Royal Navy could be left without working aircraft carriers because of continuing delays and doubts surrounding the MoD's management of the £3.6 billion project to buy new vessels, a damning report warns today.
MPs on the Commons defence committee say the whole future of the navy as a fighting force is uncertain and hangs on decisions ministers will take in the next few months.
The biggest of those decisions concerns the formal placing of the order to build two new aircraft carriers.
The ships are scheduled to be in service by 2012, but the procurement process has been hit by years of delays and blunders ... putting that timetable in doubt.
Taken together with previous history (not a million miles away from Holyrood), these stories would make me slightly hesitant about entrusting yet another massive investment/procurement exercise to our public authorities, without a very clear understanding of what is to be delivered, by when and at what cost. But the bold lads and lasses in the Scottish cabinet have no such qualms. They have decided to proceed with a new Forth crossing (see here for the press release). No, they don't know whether it will be a tunnel or a bridge; nor do they know where it will be nor, obviously when it will be completed; nor do they know how much it will cost: "at least £1 billion" seems rather vague. But never mind - according to The Scotsman (here):
Mr Scott [Transport Minister] said the project would be the biggest since devolution, and be co-ordinated by Sir John Elvidge, head of the civil service in Scotland, to ensure momentum was maintained since several government departments would be involved.Oh well, that's all right then. As Sir John will be in charge, we can all be reassured that nothing will go wrong.
I am afraid I am inclined to agree with the remarks of Mr Cochrane in The Telegraph who is not unreasonably worried about the future course of events:
What we should now dread is for the Scottish Executive to announce that there is to be an international architectural competition and that a certain Miss Kirsty Wark is to be one of the judges. That same lady, you may remember, helped pick the Holyrood design.
Oh yes, and given the political correctness that is all the rage at present, I don't suppose it would be possible - on grounds of racial discrimination - to ban Catalans from entering any such architectural competition, would it?
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