An 11th-hour dispute between the design-and-build contractor for the £512M Edinburgh tram scheme and client, Transport Initiatives Edinburgh, last week meant the track-laying did not go ahead as planned.
Contractor Bilfinger Berger – part of the tram project consortium BSC – said it could not start on-site because the client ‘failed to meet contractually-agreed conditions’. It was seeking agreement on ‘the resulting additional costs’ before it would start construction. The delay will derail the tight timetable for construction, throw the 2011 date for completion into jeopardy, and push up costs.
The contractor had been given until July to ‘substantially complete’ work on Edinburgh’s main retail thoroughfare of Princes Street, when an embargo on work for the Edinburgh festival would kick in. A further embargo on work would come in for Christmas and Hogmanay.
However, Transport Initiatives Edinburgh, the arm’s-length delivery company for the city council, said the additional demands made by the contractor were ‘unacceptable’, and had been made 48 hours before work was due to begin.
The utility diversion work, which Carillion started under a single contract in July 2007, had been delayed elsewhere, but not at Princes Street, where it was planned to continue alongside the construction work until April. Bilfinger Berger retorted it had ‘advised the client on several occasions’ over recent months that work could only get under way, once preliminary services ‘have been completed in full’.
Construction on the 18km phase one of the Edinburgh tram project had originally been planned to start on the 2km section of Leith Walk, where the contractor had expected to be allowed on-site in October. But the work to move the pipes and cables to allow the track to be laid had been delayed.
The city council had already put in place traffic-management arrangements to divert buses and general traffic away from Princes Street, where the utility diversion work was continuing as Surveyor went to press. Council leader, Cllr Jenny Dawe, hailed data showing that traffic diversions implemented early on Saturday morning had not affected the number of people coming into the city centre.
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