Crime pays for Skanska

Prisons and the private sector are proving to be surprisingly happy cellmates. At least, that's the view of Blarite think-tank the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), a major influence in shaping New Labour's public spending plans over the past four years.

Last month's IPPR study on the role of the private sector in providing public services, Building Better Partnerships, reported that prisons built and run under PFI provide "significant gains" in terms of value-for-money when compared to the performance of the public sector.

As the outgoing chief inspector of prisons Sir David Ramsbotham, who left the post at the beginning of August, said just prior to his departure: "Private prisons have been delivering, by and large, a far higher standard of treatment for prisoners than the public sector."

All of which is music to the ears of New Labour, which has come under heavy fire since the election for its policy of involving the private sector in provision of key public services.

It is also good news for the private sector firms that have been taking an increasing role in incarcerating the nation's criminals since the first privately managed prison opened in 1992. Nine years later, roughly one in 10 of the 135 remand prisons in England and Wales is run by the private sector.

Premier Prison Services, a joint venture between FM outfit Serco and US security giant Wackenhut, has built - and now runs - five of these 13 prisons.

The most recent, HM Prison Dovegate in Staffordshire, opened last month. Built by Skanska, and finished two months ahead of schedule, Premier believes it demonstrates why using the private sector to provide prison services is, in the words of operations director Joe Mullins, "providing the tax payer with far better value for money".



Key to this success, in the eyes of both Mullins and Skanska's Dovegate project manager Paul Wright, is the long-term relationship that has developed between the client, the contractor, architect, subcontractors and supply chain.

As Wright says: "In theory, we could change architect and sub-contractors every time we do a different prison, shopping around for the best deal. But once they've been with you for a couple of jobs, you need to stay married to keep competitive. Having a secure supply chain that can deliver is crucial."

And Mullins adds: "The effectiveness of the construction team over all of our prison projects has been very significant in allowing us to move things forward and make continuous improvements with each new job."

The construction team was originally headed up by Kvaerner, who built the other four prisons currently run by Premier, and had already been working on Dovegate for almost a year before being taken over by Skanska in September 2000.

The team transferred smoothly into the ownership of Skanska, who also took on Kvaerner's lucrative partnership arrangement with Premier - under its terms, Skanska will automatically take on the construction of any future new-build prison contract awarded to Premier.

In the case of Dovegate, Kvaerner was awarded a £69m fixed-price, lump-sum contract. The architect, Capita, was employed on a design and build basis, and like the rest of the team involved with constructing the prison, has worked on almost all of the Premier prison projects.

The design of the prison had to be within tight specifications laid out by the prison service. Peter Wright, Premier's project director, says: "With all prisons, we have to work from an outline brief given to us by the client - the Home Office. This specifies the level of security we need to have, the height of the walls, the number of locks, and so on.

"But there's still room for innovation in the design."

And seeing as Premier would be running the prison when it was built, Wright worked closely with the construction team to determine the design of Dovegate.

Skanska's Wright says: "It's very much an operator-led design. We discussed with Premier things like how we can speed up movement of prisoners between blocks within the prison. For instance, compared to Lowden Grange, the first prison we built, the football pitch is much closer to the gymnasium. It gets down to the detail of what different kinds of work and activity each prisoner does."

The design has also given the prisoners themselves much more consideration. The layout of the cells is intended to reduce self-harm and vandalism. Radiator pipes have been removed, and a tougher, resin-cast sanitary ware is being used. An electric tap system has been installed which switches off automatically after a few seconds.

Even the interior decor is different - at Dovegate it is dominated by pastel colours, an attempt to get away from the institutional magnolia typical of most prisons.

The project is also the first of Premier's new-build prisons to feature the use of 3D computer-aided-design. According to Wright, this has accelerated the construction process considerably. "It just meant we didn't have to make any alterations as we went along," he says. "It's another innovation that we will definitely be using again next time around."

Modularisation has featured highly in the construction of Dovegate. "Our experience with other prisons made us aware how much they lend themselves towards pre-fab," explains Wright. "In the prison blocks particularly, there's a lot of repetition work, so we've been able to cut down on the number of different panels made."

That has allowed a considerable amount of work to be done off-site. Everything bar the sports hall, industrial unit and chapel was made up by pre-cast concrete supplier CV Buchan and brought to the site by lorry.

Here again, experience played its part, with Wright drawing up a detailed schedule for all deliveries to the site. "On previous prisons, we had problems of trucks overtaking each other on the road, then having to wait outside before making their delivery," explains Wright. "This time around, we wanted - and got - military precision."

And, through another instance of far-sightedness, Wright was able to cut down on numbers of lorry trips - by taking the hardcore material for the prison foundations from elsewhere on the site. The holes left behind are now three lakes - part of a land management scheme that also includes 12,000 trees, designed to improve the area's biodiversity.

This also represented a useful public relations exercise with the local community - who were not initially favourable towards the idea of Dovegate.

"It's inevitable that the 'nimby' attitude will prevail," observes Wright. "But we just tried to make sure we kept the local community regularly informed and inconvenienced them as little as possible."



As is to be expected, performance measures for the project have been tough. "The Home Office marks us according to how many cells we have open," explains Premier's Mullins. "So obviously if part of the prison wasn't finished in time, we would have faced huge financial penalties."

This meant plenty of pressure on the contractor. "The expectations are zero defects - and we wouldn't have got the job signed off if there were any," says Skanska's Wright.

Clearly though, the experience gained from constructing Premier's four other prisons had a positive impact on the performance of Wright's team - Dovegate was completed two months early.

Skanska receives no direct financial bonus for this, other than the savings it makes from not having men on site - but partnering is all about teamwork, and its partners at Premier have appreciated the early finish enormously.

Mullins explains: "Our custody officers have been able to get used to the prison and use the facilities for training. If construction work had not finished until July, as originally planned, we would have had to train our staff at a nearby school."

Now open, Dovegate will accommodate up to 800 category B prisoners, and Premier is confident it will provide another example of how the private sector can deliver on prisons.

Peter Wright admits that privatising prisons was a controversial move. "Every interest group and trade union in the prison world was concerned about involving the private sector," he says. "But I think we have proved them wrong on three counts: first, the efficiency of our design; second, by acting as a stalking horse - encouraging higher levels of achievement in the public sector; and third, by building a happier relationship between staff and prisoners."

As Mullins says: "We've tried to get away from the Home Office culture of treating prisoners as a number. We prefer to address them by title and surname, and all our staff wear name badges to encourage a less confrontational culture. We're even happy for them to have TVs in their cells - it makes them behave better!"

It is this liberal approach towards prisoners that is helping to convince many of the benefits privatised prisons can offer. David Ramsbotham has even suggested that privatisation may solve the problems of troubled young offenders institution Feltham. "I recommend that responsibility for the custody of young prisoners in Feltham shoud be withdrawn from the prison service and passed to the private sector," he urged two weeks ago.

But although rehabilitation of prisoners may be proving far more successful in privatised prisons, re-conviction rates of inmates is not, as yet, something that has been included in the performance measures for Premier. Critics of the PFI regime may argue that this would be the truest measurement of the success or otherwise of privatised prisons. And Mullins admits: "If this was introduced, we would have to re-negotiate and re-price the contract."

In the meantime, this market is only likely to expand. Since the opening of the first privately managed prison in 1992, the prison population of England and Wales has risen by 20,000 to over 66,000. By 2005, it is projected that there could be 92,000 under lock and key.

And more prisoners mean even more contracts for the private sector.

Crime is certainly paying for Skanska and Premier.