For Argyll

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for Argyll and Bute Council. It seems to have attracted a jinx on pier / slipway contracts. For Argyll has reported several times on the foreseeable and avoidable problems at the new Port Askaig Harbour development on Islay, with the slipway for the small ferry over to Feolin on Jura unusable for serious safety reasons.

Now the same Argyll island has been hit with a double whammy. The new, purpose-designed pier at Bruichladdich Distillery seems, according to Islay newspaper, The Ileach, not to be fit for the purpose. after all.

Its function was to enable Shell UK to deliver heavy fuel oil for the Islay distilleries by sea rather than by tanker on the roads. Shell forced the Council’s hand on the issue by threatening to stop tanker deliveries to the island if the pier extension wasn’t built. This pressure led to the new pier project that was scrambled through without some quite basic research being done beforehand, leaving the completed structure now of limited use.

The pier was designed to facilitate the docking of one particular ship, the oil tanker Keewhit. The built reality is that Keewhit can only dock there at high tide in specific weather conditions; and even then carrying only 600 tons of fuel - a percentage of its commercial capacity. Tanker delivery by road remains a necessity.

The project had faced local opposition when it was proposed. Objections centred around environmental issues and the lack of benefit to local fishing boats and leisure craft. Now the pier cannot even be used by the ship it was designed to facilitate.

To parahrase Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, to screw up one harbour development may be regarded as a misfortune; to screw up a second looks like carelessness.

Logic alone suggests that there is a need for the Council to examine the process by which its major engieering developments are researched, specified, tendered, costed, contracted and monitored. Something, somewhere would appear to be repeatedly going wrong in more than one of these areas. It has to be discoverable.

The final cost of the Port Askaig harbour development is also giving serious cause for concern. The project was initially costed at £5,500,000 but accordign to the Council’s Andrew Law, this figure was ‘was based on an outline idea and not detailed design’. Writing earlier this year, in February 2008, Mr Law went on to say that: ‘Current estimates are:

• Phase 1: £5,200,000
• Phase 2: £6,500,000 and
• Phase 3: £1,000,000

producing a cost of £12,700,000. The project is taking 9 years to complete’.

Worse, the contractors on the Port Askaig job,  Carillion, completed the marine works very late. In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of public service contracts, where one would have expected it to be subject to a penalty, the company has now warned the Council that it is to claim for around £1.5 million more to cover the costs on its time overrun. These claims will be disputed by the Council.

The Scottish Government has introduced an advisory body of poachers turned gamekeepers - finance and industry specialists - to advise them on contracting public service projects. There’s no shame in copying a good idea.