Yard made thousands of costly mistakes
All we want to do is provide two lifeline vessels to island communities. Unfortunately, the previous senior management team at the shipyard failed to deliver.
The contract is an industry standard fixed-price design and build deal, which means the shipyard is responsible for design and construction for a set price.
The shipyard began building at risk – cutting and fabricating steel and building sections without sign-off by CMAL, the Marine Coastguard Authority (MCA) and the classification society, Lloyds. The management team got the specification requirements wrong many times and mistakes by the shipyard had to be rectified.
Each of the ships was contracted at £48.5m. There were 81 changes in total and 46 of those changes were requests by the shipyard and 35 were generated by CMAL. The net effect was a cost difference in favour of the yard of £750,000 – 1.6% of the contract value.
The building of the ship was started before the plans were approved. They made thousands of mistakes that had to be rectified.
In July 2017 the shipyard came to us and said, due to our supposed “interference” they were owed £17.5m. We were shocked, upset and concerned. In October 2018 they said it had increased to £28m. In December 2018 they said it was £66m. They never gave an answer as to why.
We said take us to court if you think you have a valid claim. They didn’t take us to court. Ultimately, our position was and is that there is no claim.
Our primary aim remains to deliver two vessels to island communities. We will work closely with the new Ferguson’s team to make this happen.