Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Official Report 516KB pdf

---

Forth Replacement Crossing (Project Team Update)

Item 2 is an update on the Forth replacement crossing. I welcome David Climie, the project director, and Lawrence Shackman, the project manager for the Forth replacement crossing team. David, would you like to make an opening statement on how things are progressing?

Yes. Thank you, convener. We are pleased to be here this morning to update the committee on the progress that has been made since our previous appearance on 14 December. I can confirm that the project outturn cost range remains £1.325 billion to £1.35 billion and that we continue to target May for the bridge opening to traffic. We expect to make an announcement on the precise date and the opening events that are being planned in the next few weeks, following a further programme review of all finishing activities by Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors, which is the contractor.

Although it has been a relatively mild and dry winter, we have regularly encountered windy conditions that have continued to affect the stay cable installation, tower crane removal and tower falsework removal in particular. However, FCBC has continued to make significant efforts to mitigate the effects of the wind by resequencing, reprogramming and using additional resources as and where possible.

In the past 12 months, the site workforce has averaged 1,282 and it is currently running at nearly 1,350. Due to the changing nature of the works that we are now undertaking to completion, over 600 new workers have received a site induction since we returned to work in January.

I will now focus on progress on the principal contract. On the south side, the road works are substantially complete, with final landscaping and planting works continuing. Work on the local roads around Queensferry has also been virtually completed in the period.

On the Queensferry crossing itself, all the deck units have now been lifted into place, the last one having been lifted on 3 February. I am sure that you will have noted that the media coverage on that day focused very much on the site workforce. It showed clearly that they are highly dedicated, motivated and enthusiastic and want all of Scotland—indeed, all the world—to know about the success of their bridge and to celebrate it.

The final 400mm gap between the south approach viaducts and the cable-stayed bridge was jacked closed on 27 February on the southbound side and on 1 March on the northbound side. Final welding of those joints is in progress, after which the final four deck concrete pours will be carried out to complete the main bridge deck. That will allow the inside of the deck boxes to be made weathertight and the installation and commissioning of the deck dehumidification equipment, as well as the on-going installation of electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems throughout the structure.

11:15  

On the deck finishing activities, all the stay cables have been installed on the south and centre towers and only two stay cables remain to be lifted at the north tower. Work on installing the vehicle restraint barriers and the wind shielding has progressed well, with 80 per cent of the posts having been erected and 8 per cent of the acrylic louvres having been positioned.

Deck waterproofing commenced on 5 January on the central reservation and on 27 January on the main carriageway, and 8 per cent of the surface area has been completed so far. An initial delivery of deck asphalt was laid on 15 February, followed by 400 tonnes on 17 February, which was laid in about four hours and covered a 350m length of the southbound carriageway. That was the first of two layers of binder course, which will be covered by the final surfacing immediately prior to the bridge opening. Three out of four of the bridge expansion joints have been installed.

Work started on removal of the first tower crane at the north tower on 21 January and it is now well progressed, but it was particularly frustrating for FCBC that no work was possible due to wind between 11 and 27 February, as we needed a 48-hour window in which winds were below 25mph to remove the supports that were attached to the towers and to remove the crane mast sections. The temporary trestles and platforms on either side of the north tower were removed on 29 and 30 January and 23 and 24 February. Once the tower crane is removed, the remaining concrete section of deck where the crane’s mast was located can be cast. Those activities will be repeated at the centre and south towers over the next two months.

On the north side road works, the mainline A90 was diverted over the new emergency crossover alignment just before Christmas for northbound traffic and on 20 January for southbound traffic. That released the area for the construction of the new southbound slip roads from the new Ferrytoll junction to the Queensferry crossing and the public transport link to the Forth road bridge. Work on Hope Street in Inverkeithing and the reconfigured park-and-ride facility at Ferrytoll should be completed by the end of this month.

Works on the intelligent transport system—the ITS—and the bridge control room fit-out continue to be progressed. Regular handover meetings have been taking place with Amey, which is the Forth bridges operating company, to prepare it for the operation and maintenance of the bridge and the approach roads after their opening.

Community relations continue to be extremely good, with the north and south community forums having met as a single entity for the second time in February. We have now had over 70,000 people attend an event relating to the FRC, with nearly all the meetings having been held in the project’s contact and education centre. Over 20,000 of those people have been pupils from schools throughout Scotland.

Thank you, David. That was a very comprehensive briefing. Mike Rumbles will ask the first question.

I would like to focus on the budget for the project. After your previous appearance before the committee, you sent a very helpful letter to the convener on 23 January. You confirmed in your opening statement that the current budget is £1.35 billion. In your letter, you say that the reduction of £245 million in the project budget is due to two things:

“The saving due to lower than expected inflation is ... £192 million. The remaining saving of £53 million is a reduction in the allowance for risk and optimism bias”.

That brings the budget down to £1.35 billion, which you have confirmed today. Your letter says that that budget of £1.35 billion includes a new estimate for inflation of just £45 million. Now that inflation is rising again, is that sufficient? Is the £1.35 billion now fixed because it is a fixed-price contract?

You are asking two questions. First, you are correct to say that inflation is starting to rise, and we are starting to see that in the construction indices. Traditionally, we have initially had provisional indices that are then made into final indices about three months later. Over the past four years, we have seen a blip in the summer, when the provisional indices have kicked up; subsequently, when they have been made final, they have dropped back again. However, we have not seen that this time—the indices are continuing to rise and there is an upward curve for the first time. The benefit that we have is that, because the project is over 95 per cent complete, very little of the money that remains to be paid is exposed to inflation. Therefore, we are very confident that the £45 million that we are talking about will not change and that the budget can be achieved.

Will you remind me of your second question?

Is it the case that the £1.35 billion budget has not increased because it is a fixed-price contract?

That is correct. We still firmly believe that the figure of £1.35 billion is a ceiling.

That is the ceiling and the reduction is down to lower inflation and, as you said in your letter,

“a reduction in the allowance for risk and optimism bias”.

Correct.

Thank you.

You mentioned that the weather has had a bit of an effect. There were 16 days when you could not work on the cranes because of the wind. Has that been the only major problem? I do not think that we have had severe frost or snow.

That is true. The winter could be characterised as being reasonably favourable. However, even though it appears—if we look out of the window—to be a beautiful sunny day, at present the wind is blowing at 40mph out on the bridge deck, which means that a number of operations cannot go on. That is quite typical of the situation over the winter: it has been bright and sunny, but the wind has been quite an issue.

We have focused on the areas that the wind affects—the tower crane removal and the stay cable installation. It is the stay cable installation at the top—at the tower end—that is the issue. Down at the deck level, as members have seen for themselves, work can continue even when it is significantly windy. The more wind shielding we can install, the more benefit it provides for the workers on the deck in carrying out their activities. The work on the deck is becoming progressively less wind sensitive, although that does not take away from the fact that there is still an issue with the trestles underneath the deck, which need to be lowered on to barges, and with the removal of the tower cranes.

I would like to expand on the issue with the removal of the tower cranes. We started dismantling the north tower crane on 21 January. The key issue is that, up until now, the main jib of the tower crane has been above the level of the tower. That means that, when the wind blows, the crane acts like a weather vane, so once the wind speed gets above 40mph, the crane cannot operate. The crane jib points in the direction that the wind is blowing in, which minimises the load on the mast. Once we start to lower the crane, the crane jib is prevented from being able to rotate by the tower. The crane mast has to be locked in its set position, which runs parallel to the bridge deck. If we get significant winds, that puts much more load on the crane mast than would normally be the case.

Therefore, when we started to lower the tower crane, there was a constraint. Once we were below the top of the tower, before we could take out the next tie section to the tower and take down the next mast sections, we needed a 48-hour window with no winds above 25mph. We were ready to start that operation on 11 February, but we did not get that 48-hour window until 27 February. When we got it, which was nine days ago, we progressed very quickly. We have now got three of the ties out and all of the jib has been removed from the crane so work can progress, but a similar issue could arise with the centre and south tower cranes. We are not saying that it will happen, but it could.

FCBC has taken action to mitigate that risk. Originally, it was going to dismantle the cranes sequentially—the north tower crane, then the south tower crane, then the centre tower crane—but it has now mobilised in such a way as to enable work to be done on the south and centre tower cranes simultaneously so that, if suitable weather comes along, we can make the most of it. Mitigation is in effect for those items.

As a layperson, I do not know much about this, but I presume that the cranes have to be completely out of the way before you can open the bridge.

Indeed they do.

You said that the relevant parts of the deck will get filled in with concrete.

That is right.

Does the continuation of winds that restrict the removal of the cranes present the biggest weather risk? If it is very wet, will that cause a problem with the road surfacing?

That is an issue, although wet conditions are more of an issue for the waterproofing that will go on to the deck than for the road surfacing. The key to road surfacing is that all the various layers have to stick together well—we do not want the surface to start splitting apart and creating potholes.

The issue with the waterproofing is that it is necessary to have a dry surface before it can be applied. It is a spray-applied rubber membrane, and we must guarantee that the surface is dry before the rubber membrane is applied, so we must have dry conditions for that. If the surface is not dry when the waterproofing is put down, what happens is that, because the asphalt is very hot, when it is applied on top of the waterproofing, it vaporises any moisture that is trapped underneath the waterproofing, which creates a bubble. The fact that such bubbles will push up and crack the asphalt straight away means that we can check immediately after we have put down the first layer of asphalt to make sure that that is not an issue. Although there is a check within the overall process to make sure that the surface was dry when the waterproofing was applied, it is extremely important that it is dry.

So the two biggest risks in the next two or three months are the wind and the rain.

Correct. Waterproofing goes at a significantly slower rate than the laying of asphalt. We laid 350m of a single carriageway in about three or four hours. The asphalt can be placed much more quickly than the waterproofing can be applied.

The two rate-determining factors are getting the tower cranes down so that we can close the holes in the deck, which is wind related, and then applying the waterproofing, which is water related.

So you are 99 per cent certain that we are on target for time.

Perhaps 99.9 per cent?

I see that you do not want to put a figure on that.

When the cabinet secretary was talking to us about the bridge, he used the word “hope” three times. That was fine at that stage, but we are quite keen to tie you down to a time. Will it be ready before the end of May?

That continues to be our target, and I expect that to be achieved. I cannot give you a guarantee as there are no guarantees.

Let me quote the long-term weather forecast for the period from Sunday 12 to Tuesday 21 March—the next two weeks—that I received from the Met Office first thing this morning. It says:

“Remaining unsettled for much of the UK on Sunday, it'll be rather windy with showers or longer spells of rain. However, conditions are likely to become drier, brighter and less windy as we head into the new working week, particularly across southern and eastern areas. During this time, we will probably still see occasional bands of rain moving in from the west to affect mainly the north of the UK though. Later in the period it may well gradually become more unsettled and windy again across the country with gales in the northwest at times. Temperatures will probably be near of slightly above average, but still with the risk of night frosts, especially in central and southern parts.”

That is certainly a first—I do not think that a committee has ever had the weather forecast read to it. However, perhaps that was a distraction method, so I will try to pin you down one more time. Do you have an expectation that is more than a hope? If things go well, is completion by the end of May a realistic option?

Yes, it is still a realistic possibility to get traffic on to the bridge in May. If it was not, I would tell you that. However, I will not guarantee it, for the reasons that I have just outlined.

Gail Ross has a question on more mundane things than the weather.

I would not say that.

It is worth mentioning that, along with showing the fantastic picture of the last segment being lifted into place, the front page of your update notes that we now have the tallest bridge in the United Kingdom and the longest three-tower cable-stayed bridge in the world. That is quite something. Do not take this the wrong way, but I do not think that I have ever been as excited about a bridge as I am about this one. It is absolutely beautiful.

You mentioned landscaping in your opening statement, and we spoke about that when we visited at the end of October. The update says that, last year, you planted 40,000 trees and shrubs, with a further 50,000 being planted this year, and that the target is for 400,000 trees and shrubs to be planted. Will you tell us a little more about what kinds of trees and shrubs those are and where they were sourced? Further, considering that you have quite a bit more planting to do, is there a timescale for the work? Obviously, it will continue once the bridge is open.

We wanted to ensure that all the trees and plants that were supplied had Scottish provenance, so we did not leave that up to the contractor. We placed a direct order with a company—it is an England-based company, but the provenance of its materials is Scottish. It is a call-off contract, which means that we said, in outline, what we wanted and the contractor calls off what it wants, with the company being paid for what it plants. There are rates for planting trees, shrubs, grass and so on. That guarantees that what we plant has the right provenance.

The planting season runs from October to March, in general, because that is the time when we will not be putting things into dry ground. Inevitably, that means that not everything will be done by March 2017, so further planting will have to be done in the next planting season, from October 2017 through to the end of the year. A relatively small amount of planting will still be needed in the limited areas where final road changes will be made on the north side.

11:30  

The contractor, FCBC, is responsible for maintaining the planting through the five-year defect notification period. The plants and shrubs that were planted during the two earlier contracts that were completed four years ago have been maintained through that period; if there were any failures, the plants were replaced through the contract that we competitively tendered some years ago.

Good morning, gentlemen. Have any new issues of concern been raised by local residents or businesses during the past couple of months? If there have been issues, how have they been resolved?

Community engagement is still on-going, on an individual level and with the community forums; our last meeting with them was on 28 February. The forums are where the local community groups and previous objectors to the scheme come together to represent the views of colleagues and the residents of Queensferry, Inverkeithing, Rosyth and other places. Engagement now focuses more on what will happen post-opening. I touched on the road users—or the bridge users—guide at the last meeting. We have shared that with them so that they know, to some extent, how the road network is going to work. Residents are keen to know how the area will be maintained once the bridge is open and who will be responsible, so we are setting up meetings to let them know the roles of the operating company, Amey, and the local authorities for local roads maintenance. FCBC will have contractual obligations for a period, such as for the landscaping. Those are the main issues raised.

Residents are keen to understand the remaining activities and when they will be completed, including the obligations in the Forth Crossing Act 2011. An example is the footpath cycleway that is being constructed from the A904 to the south abutment of the bridge and back up the other side to form a bypass of the Queensferry junction; I am trying to give an indication of when that work will be finished. We have said that we will undertake additional works to improve footpaths on Society Road as the clear-up from the south side of the Forth progresses southwards as the contractor tidies up the site; that will be undertaken during 2017.

That is a brief flavour of the issues that we are discussing with the local communities.

As a child, I was fortunate enough to go to see the new Forth road bridge. How will we continue to work with Amey and local communities to ensure that people can once again commemorate one of the most iconic buildings? The three bridges together are fantastic.

The contact and education centre is key—we touched on it the last time we were in front of the committee. We intend to keep the centre going well into 2018 and to keep our engagement with schools—David Climie mentioned that more than 20,000 pupils have attended events in the centre since January 2013. We will put forward a case to try to make sure that the facility—or a similar one—keeps going well into the future; a bit of work is to be done to flesh that out.

Richard Lyle is right. The bridge is iconic, and three bridges from three different centuries in the same location is a world first. We are talking to VisitScotland and EventScotland about marketing the area for the local economy and for Scotland as a whole. There is a lot of potential, such as for the education legacy—I could go on.

Thank you for the work that you have done, gentlemen.

Thank you for your update. We have had an update on public transport, and I know that there has been engagement with the bus operators and that some training has already been undertaken. Are you able to indicate what the likely changes to bus service operations will be?

The bus operators came in for a training day on 28 February and we gave them a comprehensive run-through of all the bus facilities, including hard-shoulder-running facilities, a look back on what we had built as part of the two original contracts and a look at all the new facilities that are being built around the Ferrytoll park and ride. The bus operators will be able to use the hard shoulders on the Queensferry crossing when buses are affected by wind on the existing bridge. They seemed to be pretty impressed with the facilities that they will be given.

In the future, we hope that the bus operators will provide more services. We are looking to have an education programme to make the public as informed as possible about the potential for using bus as opposed to car transport to get, in the main, to Edinburgh. We will be setting up a programme to encourage people out of their cars and on to buses. That will help to stimulate bus use in the future.

We are aware of the strategy and the fact that there is a public transport group. On previous occasions when you have been at the committee, I have asked about the wider implications of that. I understand that there was engagement with the local authorities in the Lothians. Is that ongoing?

I appreciate that your obligation is to the crossing but, clearly, if you funnel people quickly into an area, there are potentially significant implications for the wider road network.

The public transport working group met in the middle of December and another meeting is planned for April. A large proportion of the group, including all the relevant local authorities, came to the bus training day. We envisage the life of the public transport working group extending a fair bit after the crossing is open, because we are keen to see how all the bus facilities work and whether they are meeting the requirements on reliability of bus journeys. We hope to stimulate further growth in the bus sector.

We will monitor the project as a whole on journey-time reliability. We will try to capture patronage in our before and after reporting, with reports at intervals of one, three and perhaps five years after opening. We will get feedback about how the measures have been implemented, how successful they have been and how, we hope, they have stimulated further journeys.

How will foot traffic and cyclists fit into the new arrangements?

They feature to some extent in the users guide that I mentioned. We will want to encourage people to continue to use the Forth road bridge for cycling and walking. We mentioned before that that bridge will be free from all the motorway traffic, which will be on the Queensferry crossing. The Forth road bridge will be a much nicer environment for those activities. We hope that they will be self-perpetuating because the surroundings will be so much more pleasant.

We have built in a lot more cycleway and footpath facilities on the connecting roads at either end of the bridge and links to the Ferrytoll park and ride and North Queensferry on the north side and to South Queensferry on the south. Wherever possible, we have tried to improve the cycle and footpath facilities.

I wanted to move on from the information on the build progress, which has been very helpful and useful.

As we look beyond the opening, there are questions on some of the what-if scenarios. The main one is this: given we do not have a definitive opening date, what is the thinking on the notice period that users will need? At what point will you take a view on that? I am not asking whether you will hit the deadline—that is a different discussion—but, from a practical point of view, at what point will you be able to say, “Right. We’re confident that we’re going to open four weeks from now,” and ensure that users will be aware of that?

To be honest, I think that we are getting very close to that point; indeed, I expect that we will be very close to it in the next three to four weeks.

You say that people need to know, but I think that it is all going to be fairly self-explanatory. Because we have built the emergency crossovers at either end of the bridge, it is not quite like shifting a set of points on a railway line; as far as the main A90 is concerned, we will change the barriers literally overnight, which will divert traffic on to the new alignment. As a result, all motorway traffic will be diverted from the Forth road bridge on to the Queensferry crossing. For 99.5 per cent of traffic, therefore, it will be a case of moving the barriers at either end of the bridge, and the traffic will then go on to the Queensferry crossing.

As for public transport—in other words, the buses, the taxis and so on that will still be able to use the Forth road bridge—the road users guide has been specifically directed at giving them more help. Our intention is that in the four weeks before the final date we will have extensive publicity on what will happen with traffic management, when the changeovers are going to take place and what they will look like. We have done that sort of thing very successfully during the works in the Ferrytoll area, and we intend to do exactly the same thing for the main opening.

It sounds from your answer as if, from the point of view of cars and that kind of road traffic, the whole thing should be quite self-explanatory. Once the change happens, drivers should be able to follow the relevant signage, which I presume will have been user tested beforehand.

However, for all the other users, I note that on your last visit to the committee you said that you would produce a guide. Do you have any update on when that will be produced, what content it will have, how it will be distributed and what type of users it will go to? Such an update will, I guess, give us comfort that all the other users, aside from car traffic, will be comfortable with this new travel method.

We actually sent a draft of the road users guide to the committee after our last appearance. Since then, we have had some feedback from various people, and the final version has now been produced. As I have said, we intend in the four-week period before the final date to distribute the guide very widely and to make it available on our website, too. I think that we are looking at a print run of 10,000, and we will distribute it through the various associations, local authorities, bus companies, taxi firms and so on that we deal with. We have a good plan for ensuring that we distribute this information; indeed, the guide is very comprehensive and will ensure that no matter what type of vehicle you have or whether you are a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist or whatever, you will be able to identify clearly where you have to go.

So 10,000 copies of the guide are being printed and distributed not to everyday households but to specific user groups.

That is right, although we will probably distribute the guide to individual households in the local area, given that they will probably be most affected by what is happening on the local roads. We will make that very clear in the guide.

Does your public awareness campaign include some above-the-line media spend to let people know about the change? Have you set aside some of your budget for that?

Yes. It is very much built into our overall communications budget. Indeed, a fundamental part of our comms strategy is to ensure that this is well publicised. As I have said, what we did with information about Ferrytoll gives us a good template, and we intend to expand and build on that.

That is great. Thank you.

I should say that we will also have drop-in sessions for the public. They can call into the contact and education centre if they need further information, and we will certainly be having some public meetings. If anyone has any particular queries, we will be able to answer them.

I believe that Peter Chapman has a small question.

It is just on that point, convener. You have made it fairly clear that all of this should be pretty obvious, but some confusion can often arise when new roads open. How will you enforce things if someone gets it wrong and, for whatever reason, lands up on the road bridge? Will there be any penalties for folk who get it wrong in the first few weeks?

Inevitably, there will have to be a transition period, because people can clearly make mistakes when faced with new things. However, there will be very clear signage on the slip roads to the Forth road bridge showing what is and what is not allowed, and all this will be monitored by automatic number-plate recognition system—Big Brother, to a degree. The Forth road bridge also has an existing closed circuit television system, which is monitored regularly to make sure of that. In the initial stages, we also intend to have an enhanced police presence. That will be as much about directing people as anything else. The intention is not to be overzealous at the start, but we anticipate that things will happen.

11:45  

The Queensferry crossing is a motorway, so the normal speed limit will be 70mph. We are considering the possibility of running the limit at 50mph initially. When people are driving over the crossing for the first time, they will probably want to look around and see what is going on instead of focusing on where they are going. We have been talking to police about that, and it may well be that, for an initial period and until people get used to the crossing, we will have a 50mph limit. That would seem to be sensible.

Peter, I am pretty sure that that does not give you the right to a last nostalgic trip over the bridge and to ignore the ANPR.

What about people who do not know the area? What about updating satnav systems when the bridge opens? Satellite navigation seems to take you where it wants to go.

That is true. I will make sure that, as part of our communications strategy, we are in contact with the satnav companies to ensure that the issue is dealt with.

Thank you.

I have a supplementary question on traffic diversions. Unlike the old bridge, the new bridge is able to cope with high wind. Given that the old bridge will be used by public transport and the like, can traffic be easily diverted on to the new bridge? Any diversion would create delay, so would any priority be given to public transport?

Yes. A lot of thought went into how we would safeguard public transport and keep the journey times as reliable as possible when there are high winds.

Single and double-deckers are affected by the high-wind strategy on the Forth road bridge when the wind speed gets up to 50mph. In those situations, we have variable message signs that will indicate to buses that they should use the Queensferry crossing. In normal traffic conditions, they would just use the normal running lanes on the crossing. Should it become congested and the variable speed limits are reduced, buses can use—and will be directed to use—the hard shoulders, so that they can bypass the slower moving traffic, just as they do on the Fife ITS bus lane. That would preserve as much as possible the routing and journey-time reliability for buses. Southward traffic will be directed from the Ferrytoll junction to use the hard shoulders on the Queensferry crossing, to come off at the other end and to travel on to their desired destination, thereby minimising disruption.

If there is an accident on the new crossing, will it similarly be the case that traffic can be diverted to the old bridge? If there were a wide load that was likely to slow traffic, could that be diverted, too?

There are hard shoulders on the Queensferry crossing. Therefore, we have a much better facility for providing resilience, should a vehicle break down or should there be an incident. Indeed, there is a lot more room for vehicles to get past in the first place. Obviously, there are no hard shoulders on the Forth road bridge, and any incident culminates in a tailback pretty quickly. We also have all the variable message signs, the lane-control facilities to close a lane by displaying a red cross—you have probably seen that on the motorway network elsewhere—and we can control speed limits.

If there were an incident of a long duration—I cannot definitively say what a “long duration” is, but it would be of reasonable length—it would be possible, as David Climie has mentioned, to reopen the emergency crossovers so that the traffic could use the Forth road bridge.

I probably should know the answer to this, but is there a central reservation on the crossing? You talked about variable lanes. Does that refer to traffic flow, too? Could you have four lanes going in one direction and two lanes going in the other? What variation parameters do you have?

The Queensferry crossing has a central reserve, but all the stay cables are there, so there is no means of crossing over the carriageways. The bridge has two lanes in each direction, with hard shoulders. There are lane-control units over each lane at regular intervals and variable message signs at regular intervals all the way through the project corridor to control the traffic. However, we cannot do four-plus-two or tidal-flow conditions.

My question comes back to money. This morning, the end date of the end of May has been heavily caveated, both by you and by the minister. What happens if the bridge is not completed by the contractual date in June? Will there be any more cost to the public purse if that is missed, or does the contractor pick up the bill on a fixed-price contract?

On your first point, that the date is heavily caveated, I took up my post nearly seven years ago, in April 2010, and if someone had said to me then that, seven years later, I would be sitting in front of a committee discussing a two or three-week variation in the opening date for the crossing and an overall budget that compares favourably to what it was when I joined the project—when it was £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion—I would have bitten their hand off. You say that we are caveating the date, but we are talking about a very small window of time on a seven-year project.

Maybe I am being unfair, but are you therefore saying—I will be very relieved if you are—that you are 100 per cent certain that the opening will not go beyond the contractual date in June?

It is quite difficult to ask somebody to be 100 per cent certain. The question that Mike Rumbles asked and that David Climie can answer is whether there is an implication for the budget if there are unforeseen circumstances. It is unfair to ask him to be 100 per cent certain—we can never be 100 per cent certain on most things in life.

Except that David Climie said that the variation will be two or three weeks, which means that he would be certain.

I would prefer that David Climie answers the question about the money.

If there is an overrun on the contract completion date, there is no risk to the public purse of an extra cost. Any work that runs past the contract date will be entirely down to the contractor. There is no risk at all to the budget of going past the contract completion date. That is categorically 100 per cent the case.

Thank you.

Thank you for that 100 per cent guarantee.

Once the bridge is opened, the first year will be critical. I would like some assurances about the process of handing it over to the operator and about the maintenance. What work is on-going on that and will there be a period of hand holding to make sure that everything works and that people understand?

The committee will be aware that there is a Forth bridges operating contract. Amey is currently the holder of that contract, led by Mark Arndt—I think that he has appeared in front of the committee on a number of occasions. We have had a very close relationship with the Forth bridges operating company and, before that, with the Forth Estuary Transport Authority, going right back to the design stage of the bridge. We involved FETA in discussions about maintenance and what it wanted built into the bridge. That has been an on-going process since day 1.

Since Amey came into position, about two years ago, we have worked closely together, and Amey’s technicians and operators have come and looked at what we are building as we build it, so that they can see exactly how it is being put together. They came out within the past couple of weeks and went inside the bridge deck to see all the various structural health monitoring, mechanical and electrical equipment that is being installed. FCBC’s contract includes an obligation to undertake the training of all the Amey operatives to make sure that they are fully familiar with everything and how it links into the bridge control room—how the structural health monitoring system works.

It is not a case of the bridge being opened to traffic and us just handing over the keys and walking away, or of FCBC, the contractor, doing that. There is an on-going obligation and, in fact, we anticipate that, in the first six months after opening, there will be a need for a significant amount of tweaking and adjustment of various things, including items on the bridge itself. If the structural health monitoring showed up some odd readings, we would get all that checked out and verified, and if a sensor is not working, it might need to be replaced—that sort of thing.

There is a whole period of handover—not just one day but about six months. We have worked that through in a great deal of detail. In relation to the governance of that, Mark Arndt came to our project board last week to give an update on how he felt things were going. We have been telling him how it is going from the project side of things and we asked him to come along and give Amey’s side of the story. He gave a very similar picture to the one that I have just given—that there is very good engagement and we are working closely together. That will increase over the next few weeks and continue beyond the opening to traffic.

We have no other questions. Is there anything further that David Climie would like to bring to our attention, or have we covered the majority of issues already?

We have covered the majority. Thank you.

I thank David Climie and Lawrence Shackman for coming. I hope that we do not see you before May, because if we do, that will be because there is a problem. I can guarantee 100 per cent that we would like to see you later in the year to pick up on the project, and to see whether there are items that could be of relevance to future projects for Scotland. I thank you and your team, and hope that May is when we get to drive over the bridge.

Thank you very much.

That concludes the public part of the meeting.

11:56 Meeting continued in private until 12:36.