Mowlem: don't blame us for Spinnaker fiasco

Mowlem has cited problems with subcontractors and more than 740 variations to the designs of Portsmouth's 36m Spinnaker Tower project as some of the causes for escalating costs and a five-year delay in delivering the ill-fated scheme.

Mowlem spoke exclusively to CJ to hit back at critics who have tarred the contractor's reputation with its link to the project.
Mowlem signed the contract - valued at 21m - in 2002, after the previous developer pulled out, and disputes the reported 11m cost over-run figure. It refused to state how much it was looking to claim.

There are 740 compensation issues that need to be negotiated with Portsmouth City Council (PCC) over the next couple of months.

However, CJ can reveal a catalogue of problems Mowlem had to deal with after obtaining a briefing note written by the
council's project manager David Greenhalgh to PCC's leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson. These include:

An eight-month delay in Mowlem gaining access to the site.

Prices and planned availability of subcontractors being 13 months out-of-date by the time Mowlem started work.

Difficulties with the design approval process, resulting in lead designer Ove Arup leaving the project.

Delays caused by slip-form subcontractor Birrum going into administration while on the contract. Directly employed labour finished the work.

Both M&E design build subcontractor Rotary and steelwork contractor Cimolai walking away from the job.

Cimolai's replacement Butterley performing badly on the project, leading to extensive delays on the installation of the structure's
prefabricated steelwork. (No-one at Butterley was available to comment on the matter.)

Congestion of M&E installation requiring extensive redesign, including the introduction of extra mezzanine floors.

Extra scaffolding for the tower's viewing deck for health and safety reasons resulting in delays.

"Many of the cost overruns were incurred before we came on board in 2001 so the project was never in line for a completion
by the millennium," Mowlem Engineering managing director Norman Davies said. "We have had our problems, but the operator(Heritage) has got exactly the building that it wanted.

"However, this meant there were a lot of variations in the contract as it went along. We had to redesign the M&E works nine times and at one point there were 4,500 technical drawings which had not been approved. Space at the site was a problem. We were working on an area the size of a tennis court."

PCC and Heritage declined to comment on the briefing note, or Mowlem's performance.