Scotland’s Transport Minister thinks that the new Forth Road Bridge, the country’s biggest construction project in a generation, is unlikely to attract enough competition from construction companies unless the Government promises to reimburse failed bidders to the tune of up to £5 million each.
This is madness. It adds to the perception of a weak Minister easily manipulated by major businesses who see risk-free operation to be won from feigning lack of interest.
We’re in a recession. We’re told that the construction industry has been badly hit. In these circumstances how is it likely that this massive contract will not be of interest to a sufficient number of first class firms?
Open the tender process in the normal way and let the capable and vigorous construction companies bid. If there happen to be few bids, why is that a problem? There cannot be many firms capable from the outset of so major an exercise.
Would we want to see the incompetent and the fearful in the bidding? Would we want to pay them to be there? Would we want to see one such take on this contract?
Bidding, with high odds on failure, is the engine of major tenders. You go for the win and you pay the entry fee, win or lose. If you’re any good, it’s not a lottery and your bid will be a contender. You may finally be outgunned for the contract but the price of the opportunity is worth paying. Short-listing itself brings commercial gain to a corporate CV.
If you’re not sure you’re good enough you shouldn’t be subsidised to play the game. You take the risk yourself. This system is the heart of what commercial risk means. It is the red-blooded capitalist ethos embraced by private sector companies. If this doesn’t work today, let’s seriously consider a new form of nationalism.
The Transport Minister’s proposal also invites a myriad of abuses for which the taxpayer would have to stump up at a time of painful cuts to favourite projects. Imagine the howls from Glasgow.
Stewart Stevenson’s track record to date is not one to build confidence. It is hard to find successes of substance and all too easy to find poor performance.
- His apparent mendacity seriously escalated Steven Purcell’s anger at what he saw as the late cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link. If this anger was, to some degree, synthetic, then Stevenson’s very recent assurance to Purcell that the project was ‘on track’ gave the Glasgow City Council Leader all the room he needed to pour petrol on the flames.
- He is likely to have hastened unduly the reopening of Argyll’s arterial A83 after public outrage at its closure following a second serious landslide in the same place.
- His department declared a schedule for closing the A82 to Fort William at inconvenient periods in the shoulder tourist season – and then retired in disarray when the plan was met with public anger and disbelief from business interests and local government in the area.
- His lack of apparent interest in maximising what he can do through his job has offered dangerous reassurance to bad practice – such as Cydeport’s refusal to act with social responsibility.
- Now he wants to spend public money featherbedding private enterprise at the bidding stage for a major public contract when – and well into the future – Scotland has no money to spare.
This latest evidence of lack of confidence and weak performance does not augur well for the insertion of the necessary penalty clauses in the final Forth Road Bridge contract.
The new bridge under Stevenson’s care is already looking like it’s headed to rival the shambles of a previous Scottish administration’s non-management of the building of the Scottish Parliament. Was that a national shudder?
This Minister must be replaced. Transport is far too important to Scotland to be left to the care of a probably likeable but certainly inept Minister.
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