Scottish Government cabinet secretary vows to work on Transport Scotland contract terms
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Transport secretary Màiri McAllan has today vowed to 'urgently work on Transport Scotland's contract terms' to make them more favourable for future procurements on the dualling of the A9.
She made the commitment at The Inverness Courier's A9 Crisis Summit, after it was claimed that the terms and conditions of Transport Scotland's contracts were commercially unfavourable, and that is why there was just one bid on the Tomatin to Moy section of the road. The bid was rejected by Scottish ministers in February as it was seen to be too high in cost.
Ms McAllan was responding to Grahame Barn, the chief executive of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA), which represents contractors that work on Scotland's roads. He said that the outdated contracts provided by Transport Scotland, were laying all the commercial risk onto contractors, making it unattractive for them to want to do the work.
Mr Barn pointed to recent history, where contractors lost money and were put under strain having taken on contracts from Transport Scotland to complete the Queensferry Crossing and the Aberdeen and western peripheral.
He said: "The terms and conditions given by Transport Scotland to contractors are not attractive and in recent years, contractors have found it very difficult to make any money if any money at all.
"In the terms and conditions given by Transport Scotland, the contractor takes on all the risk, when in most cases with other clients that risk is shared between the contractor and client.
"Transport Scotland's contracts are commercially unattractive."
Ms McAllan said she was going to see what she can do on the risk profile to make this a more attractive offer, so that more companies can bid for work in order to make progress on the A9 dualling project.
Scottish ministers have the final say over Transport Scotland contracts as it is a governmental organisation.
However, Robert Galbraith, the contracts director from Transport Scotland who was also at today's summit, said that a change of risk allocation, would mean that the tax payer would be forking out the cost for any delays.
He said: "If we changed the risk allocation, we would probably get lower tender prices but we'll see the actual money spent on contracts increase a bit as risk will have occurred."
