Meeting of the Parliament 15 March 2016
It was a very strong rope—and it was not held by Christine Grahame. [Laughter.]
The engineers and others did their jobs in high winds and freezing conditions over several weeks. I commend their skill, bravery and commitment.
I also thank the minister, Derek Mackay, who spent hours at the Transport Scotland centre at Queensferry and provided information regularly.
There are some key findings in the report. Essentially, over the past 10 years, FETA enacted a series of checks that were above the recognised standard of assessment. The same checking regime was used after responsibility was handed from FETA to Transport Scotland. The bridge was let down by a seized pin within a link that is nigh-on impossible to check until cracks appear. All the experts who were called before the committee seemed to say that the problem that caused the disruption last December could not have been foreseen.
The issue that has been highlighted appears to be the timescales relating to FETA’s indicative business plan and whether the problem was foreseeable. It appears that there was an acceptance that the work on the truss end links would be needed at some point; indeed it was mentioned as the fifth item on the to-do list. However, it was not seen to be an emergency.
The Official Report of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee’s meeting on 27 January is quite enlightening. Former bridgemaster Barry Colford talks of acceptance of risks being subjective. His job as an engineer was to
“prioritise risk based on the philosophies of the safety of the public and the staff; the long-term integrity of the bridge; and disruption.”
Was work on the truss end links deemed as an emergency and would money have been available? Witnesses Councillor Chisholm and former councillor and FETA convener Phil Wheeler appeared settled in their view that the expert advice that had been given to them showed that there was no emergency, but that a long-term process of on-going work was needed. Phil Wheeler stated:
“we were told as a result of the spending review we must make do with what we had unless there was a real emergency.”
Perhaps the only discord came from Councillor Hinds, a former FETA convener, who said:
“We could have asked Transport Scotland for more money and I am sure that the answer would have been no.”—[Official Report, Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, 27 January 2016; c 29, 28, 29.]
I am a bit confused about why Councillor Hinds believed that without actually having asked Transport Scotland.
The evidence suggests that the inspection regime was robust, the management of the Forth road bridge has done its job over the years, and it is unfortunate that there was no way of identifying the problem before it was too late.