Contractors' road rage over œ100m A40 axing

Contractors have reacted with fury after the Highways Agency pulled the plug on two A40 projects in west London worth œ100 million, just a week before bids were due to go in.

One contractor said: "It's completely outrageous. What sort of Government leads you into this sort of situation where you waste so much money?

"It's not the first time it's happened - it keeps on happening. Is there any kind of transport strategy here at all?"

The Highways Agency said that contractors would not be compensated for the costs they had incurred as that was part of the risk of tendering. The British Road Federation estimates the two design and build tenders have cost the six bidders upwards of œ3 million between them.

The contractors hit by the decision to withdraw the schemes on the œ50 million A40 Gypsy Corner improvement are Amec, Balfour Beatty, Amey and Trafalgar House.

The four bidders for the œ50 million A40 Western Circus junction improvement are Amec and Balfour Beatty again with Nuttall and Tarmac completing the list.

A spokeswoman for the Highways Agency said: "As a result of public funding pressures, ministers in the DOT have decided not to proceed with the schemes. They will now be taken forward as design, build, finance and operate contracts."

The HA said that invitations to prequalify would be advertised in the EU Official Journal "very soon".

The Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors described the Agency's latest action as disgraceful. The FCEC's Jim Turner said: "We are only five months into the new financial year and for them to say at this stage that the schemes won't happen means there is something very rotten if they can't get things planned to avoid making mistakes like this."

Contractors were hit by a similar fiasco in the wake of the 1994 Budget when four schemes were switched to DBFO contracts and three were put on hold.

Turner commented: "What the Agency has been doing all this year has been to transfer more and more risk onto the contractor - obviously at a cost - so is this in the public interest? And how can this be consistent with the Government's declared intention of being a best practice client?"

The dropping of the two A40 schemes leaves a mere five publicly funded projects left in the 1996-97 roads programme. The Newbury bypass and the Wennington-to-Mar Dyke section of the A13 have been awarded. Amey and Amec are fighting it out for the œ75 million West-of-Heathway-to-Thames Avenue section of the A13.

Tenders were returned on the œ30 million Contract 3 of the A12 Hackney Wick to M11 link road last Monday, while the œ40 million Contract 1 goes in next Monday. No reassurance has been given that any of the remaining schemes are safe.

Once these schemes are awarded there will be no further new road schemes until the next financial year starts in April 1997.