public enemy no 1

The Trident fiasco (see page 9) is just one further chapter in the bulging encyclopedia of public sector procurement disasters. That's sad enough in itself. What's sadder still is how the public at large always blames the construction industry, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the particular case. 'To build is to be robbed,' Samuel Johnson once noted, and that perception has remained the public's ever since.

Look at the recent list of construction calamities to hit the national media. The British Library. The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Prison overspends. And now Trident. All immensely damaging to the image of builders, and almost entirely undeserved. For what the national newspapers seem incapable of explaining is that behind each of these cost explosions lie a series of client miscalculations, parsimonious Treasury decisions or, to put it bluntly, sheer commissioning cock-ups, that doomed the schemes from the start.

Nor are the one-year-at-a-time budgeting constraints under which this nation operates ever spotlighted. Yet for all the regularity with which these purchasing lessons are forced upon the public sector dunces, they never sink home.

It is no suprise, then, that the familiar scent of disaster is already tickling the nostrils of those involved with the Channel Tunnel fast-link. Senior contractors who have been close to the Link for years have had their patience, not to say sanity, tested severely on numerous occasions by the tortuous and snail-like progress of this supremely important project. And even today, eight years after the Tunnel was begun, things are no easier or clearer. On the contrary, despite firm Government backing both for the Link and the general principle of privately-funded projects, the obstacles confronting contractors on the Link often appear insurmountable.

At least one major contractor following the scheme is convinced this has the makings of the mother of all disasters. He believes the Government has drastically underestimated the risks inherent in such a complex challenge. And, compounding matters, its insouciant insistence on progressing with alacrity has conjured up visions of a latterday Charge of the Light Brigade in more than one frustrated contractor's mind.

Again, nothing new here. After dithering for years over whether a Channel Tunnel was required, once its decision was reached, the Government wanted it delivered at the drop of a hat. That breakneck start sowed the seeds for much of the calamity that inevitably followed. This time around, its amnesia is condemning it to repeat all the previous mistakes. But when construction at last gets underway, we all know who will be blamed for the inevitable delays. A happy one, the contractor's lot is not.