BEAR does best to beat default fines

The Scottish Executive issued 24 default notices to the two contractors working on its £350m five-year trunk roads contracts during 2003/04 - eight more than the year before.
Findings from the Performance Audit Group's report for 2003/04 reveal that Amey was underperforming BEAR (Babtie/Ennstone/Ringway) with 16 new default notices served this year on its contracts across the south of Scotland compared to BEAR's total of eight notices served in the north.
Financial penalties have already been issued by the Executive, although it was
unwilling to disclose how much and to whom.
In the south-east, the number of default notices issued to Amey increased from four in 2002/03 to eight in 2003/04.
The south-west saw an increase from no default notices last year to eight for Amey
in 2003/04.
The notices were issued due to failures in Amey's quality management system, inadequacies in routine and cyclic works, financial issues, failure to provide information to the department and a failure to carry out a required two-yearly task in implementing a routine maintenance management system.
In the north-west, BEAR was awarded one extra default notice, taking its total to five due to inadequacies in safety inspections.
However, in the north-east there was a reduction in default notices for BEAR, from eight in the previous year to three
in 2003/04.
In addition to the new notices there are also 20 default notices outstanding on the contracts.
Both BEAR and Amey were unwilling to comment on the report's findings.
Despite the increased number of default notices, the report did state that the contracts had been a success and that Amey and BEAR had "broadly" delivered their contract obligations.
BEAR received a special mention in the report after it was paid a large single bonus by the Executive for utilising 24-hour working on one scheme.
The bonus amounted to 9.7% of the scheme's cost.