Editor's comment: Escape route for ECI roads

Roads contractors ought to be breathing a sigh of relief if the advance word on the Nichols Report into the Highways Agency (HA) is to be believed.

The report was instigated following concerns raised by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee into the rising cost of early contractor involvement (ECI) roads.

The report, however, apparently backs the HA’s general procurement strategy and ECI roads in particular. This is good news for the industry, which is progressing about 40 ECI schemes with more in the pipeline.

It is somewhat ironic then, that a process designed to avoid the huge cost overruns that plagued traditionally procured road construction in the past, is now being accused of spiralling price rises.

This seems to indicate a lack of understanding of both how ECI schemes are designed to work and of construction in general. It is difficult to estimate the cost of an ECI scheme at the tender stage when it is, a) not fully designed, and b) won’t be on site for several years and is therefore subject to construction price inflation – something that is running way above the national rate.

The whole point of the ECI route is to produce a value-engineered solution with practical input from a contractor during the design stage to produce a robust price. But that predicted price can be finally arrived at only when the design is finished and any planning enquiry is over – several years after the scheme went out to tender. That needs to be understood by government and the general public.

The ECI route is a sensible procurement solution, but perhaps the HA needs to be more aggressive in defending and explaining its policies.

The last thing anyone needs is a return to the old-style adversarial contracts.