'A recipe for disaster'

Contractors have this week delivered a blistering attack on the Highways Agency and its delivery of the roads programme.

Reacting to news that the Agency has begun only one of the 22 major new starts promised for the current financial year, they blamed poor organisation and piecemeal Treasury funding for the slowest and lumpiest programme for years.

Even the agency's August promise to release documentation on 10 new contracts by the end of this month (see CJ 11 August) has been broken with only four being released before October and another five promised before November.

The managing director of Tarmac Construction Civil Engineering, Gordon Waters, said: 'Some programme slippage is normal, but when it slips by this amount it blows a hole in our planning. Early in the year things were very quiet and now we have three significant tenders in the office.

'We are glad to have them - but it places strains on our estimators and the client cannot be getting the best out of contractors this way,' he added.

Waters said that the reorganisation of the Department of Transport's procurement arm into the Highways Agency was only partly to blame: 'It is clear that some schemes have been considered for three different forms of contract; standard, design and build, and DBFO. That is inevitably a recipe for disaster.'

John Perkins, business development manager at Nuttall, said: 'It has been so quiet that when tenders do come out some work-starved contractors will be desperate for work. It is certainly not conducive to sensible tendering procedure.'

And a senior spokesman for Balfour Beatty said: 'If they have only started one job six months into the year you have to be concerned whether they can actually get the rest of the orders placed by the end of the year.'

The agency claims it will still achieve 20 starts this year, despite having achieved only 16 of the 109 milestones which it set for itself when created last April. When asked if shortage of funds was hampering the programme a spokesman said: 'Tender prices are rising and the situation is being kept under close review.'

Many contractors privately blame low morale among Agency staff who resent the planned closure of regional offices. But it emerged this week that the agency is considering major changes to its proposals.

John Higgins, spokesman for the Agency union, the IPMS, said: 'I believe senior people at the agency now think the re-organisation goes too far. We present our suggestions to the agency on Friday and I think some will be welcomed with open arms. We are not expecting the usual union brush off.'