CIVIL engineers have warned that work on renewing Scotland’s creaking water infrastructure is in danger of being dogged by delays and costs increases because the authorities are too slow to get the work out to contractors.
Representatives of the Civil Engineering Contractors’ Association (CECA) have met with environment minister Ross Finnie in an effort to pressurise Scottish Water to allocate the contracts more quickly so that work can be started on renewing the natio
n’s water system, which must be brought up to European standards by 2006.
They believe there is a danger that as the deadline for completion of the work looms, a large number of contracts will be awarded at the last minute, meaning there will be too few skilled workers to complete the necessary tasks, and leading to cost rises and delays.
Scottish Water is halfway through its biggest ever work programme, which will cost £1.8bn and see 1,600 miles of pipe replaced or upgraded. The project has seen Scottish Water allocate much of its work through a private joint venture, Scottish Water Solutions, in an effort to drive down costs.
But civil engineers claim the work is progressing too slowly.
An industry insider said: "We are looking at the timetable and all the work to be done and we are wondering where the time and the people are going to come from to do it all. We are worried that at the last minute all the contracts will be released in a rush and that when a company is told to get cracking on something in Edinburgh, they will reply that the people who should be doing it are away in Aberdeen working on something else. The extra people will not come from south of the Border because they are already working at full capacity. The worry is that costs will have to rise, which no-one wants, or that some of the work is just going to have to be delayed and they will just have to make some kind of fudge around the whole thing."
Commenting on the meeting with the minister, Alan Watt, chief executive of CECA (Scotland) said: "The minister agreed that the water sector’s run rate had been slow but that Scottish Water Solutions was committed to ramping up the remainder of the programme as a matter of urgency.
"He was reassured that Scotland’s civil engineering contractors believe they have the capacity to meet the ambitious timescales. He also acknowledged that the industry needed some stability in the programme management to achieve these targets and welcomed CECA’s suggestions on how the procurement strategy could be developed."
A spokeswoman for Scottish Water denied its timetable was in danger of slipping.
She said: "Our capital investment programme is ramping up massively. The programme is on track and there is no backlog. We deliberately delayed the start of some projects to allow Scottish Water Solutions to take them over and undertake a review to ensure we deliver the Scottish Executive’s requirements efficiently.
"We are working with the best in the construction industry to deliver projects to best value and to tight time constraints."
A Scottish Executive spokeswoman confirmed that Finnie had met with the industry, and added: "Mr Finnie welcomed the feedback he received from CECA. He welcomed confirmation that Scottish Water is making a significant impact in speeding up the delivery of the capital programme - benefits which are feeding through to CECA members in terms of construction contracts.
"Scottish Water’s progress in meeting these targets is being monitored carefully and ministers will hold Scottish Water accountable for their performance on this matter."
The full article contains 635 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
