Edinburgh work boom leads to labour shortage

The construction market in Edinburgh is so buoyant that clients are struggling to find contractors, according to a senior council figure.

Kenneth MacKinnon, contract procurement group leader at the council, made the comments after it emerged the local authority had been forced to cancel and resubmit an OJEU advertising a £30m project to refurbish and upgrade the city's Royal Commonwealth pool.

Only six companies applied to take on the work, but the council decided that none of them was large or experienced enough to tackle it after the big players decided to stay away.

MacKinnon said: "The feeling is that the market in Edinburgh has been dire for the past two or three years. People are so busy I'm almost pleading with them to submit bids or at least come anywhere near the estimated cost."

He added that he hoped the situation would start to improve as larger contractors started to look at the next four-year cycle of work.

But it is not just the big contracts that are feeling the squeeze, according to MacKinnon. "It's across the board. The simplistic answer is there's just too much work about. But when you analyse it, a lot of contractors say it's all sorts of things."

Civil Engineering Contractors Association (Scotland) chief executive Alan Watt backed MacKinnon's views and said workload in Scotland as a whole was heavy. "We are not surprised to hear that City of Edinburgh Council is having difficulty attracting tenderers because the Scottish market, certainly in civil engineering terms, is working flat out," he told CJ.

He pointed out that the City of Edinburgh had a reputation for rigorous prequalification requirements, even for comparatively low-value work, which meant contractors favoured work elsewhere that was easier to qualify and bid for.

MacKinnon denied the council was a difficult client to work for. "There has been a suggestion that Edinburgh is a difficult client but we pay our bills, we want the quality that the contractors signed up to. I don't see that as being difficult."