Private finance type contracts came under harsh scrutiny by the inquiry into the buildings defects that led to the collapse of a school wall in Edinburgh in April 2016.
The 260-page Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Construction of Edinburgh Schools was commissioned by the city council after some nine tonnes of masonry wall collapsed at a primary school and 17 schools, procured under a £360 million Public Private Partnership (PPP), had to be closed for months while remedial work was undertaken. It was the fifth time an external masonry wall had fallen at a Scottish school in the past few years.
The inquiry was led by Professor John Cole, an architect and retired senior civil servant, and its report has raised significant issues that might justify significant changes to design and on site processes that could be written into contracts. Although the inquiry has given the PPP procurement route that was used in Edinburgh the all clear, it has exposed what looks like serious problems with the industry’s quality assurance processes in particular.
The schools were built under a PPP1 contract with Edinburgh Schools Partnership (ESP) within the previous ten years. Miller Construction was the design and build contractor. Wall ties had not been embedded to the required depth, particularly in the outer cavity wall, and header ties were completely missing on some walls. Faults were found in 17 Edinburgh schools that had all been procured using private finance and have since been uncovered in other schools in Scotland.
If these defects are present in school buildings, the inquiry says, there is also a likelihood that they are present with similar frequency in other buildings – potentially across the UK – that contain large masonry panels or where masonry panels are required to be tied back to a structural frame. Or any building where the quality assurance system didn’t work.
It was the ‘unequivocally held view’ of the inquiry that there were fundamental and widespread failures of the quality assurance processes used on this large school building programme. The inquiry concluded that those responsible for supervision and quality assurance ‘either did not inspect the work adequately or did inspect it and failed to take appropriate action to have it removed or remedied.’
One outcome of this report into the Edinburgh schools scandal could be a revival of the use and power of the Clerk of Works, once the scourge of sloppy workmanship on most projects. The role of Independent Certifier on the PPP1 projects did not provide the appropriate level of independent scrutiny of the quality of construction, the inquiry said, but an appropriate level could easily be incorporated by using Clerks of Works.
Visits by Independent Certifiers to site and time spent by them on site are much less frequent and shorter than that provided by a project Clerk of Works and do not have the same detailed focus on the quality of construction. The inquiry also held that awareness by site operatives that a Clerk of Works is on site can impact positively on their approach to the quality of their work.
It might sound a bit like harking back to the days when Matrons ran hospital wards, but clearly some at least of the industry’s quality assurance procedures aren’t working and need a bit of matronly nursing back to health.
Nick Barrett
Editor