The Cowes floating bridge Stakeholders Group have today written to the Chief Executive and the Head of Policy, Communications and Partner Engagement at Solent Local Enterprise Partnership (SLEP), requesting a meeting between the SLEP and stakeholders.
Floating Bridge 6 was funded through the SLEP as part of the Solent Gateways project, as secured by the previous Island Independent administration. Today’s letter (copied below) sets out the serious concerns of those impacted by the failure of the project, includes a timeline of the failures and the list of questions prepared for the Scrutiny Committee, the majority of which remain unanswered. Ed
Dear Ms Anne-Marie Mountfield and Mr Richard Jones,
With reference to – The Floating Bridge Project Funding Agreement. [Your letter to John Metcalfe Chief Executive Isle of Wight Council dated 21st March 2016 and
available in the public domain] I’m writing to you for and on behalf of the members of the stakeholder group to request a meeting to discuss the state of affairs relating to Floating Bridge No: 6.
Who the Stakeholder Group are
We are a group of Island residents, mostly with professional engineering and project management expertise, and include some town councillors.
Our concerns
These centre around the performance of the Isle of Wight Council (IOWC) in managing the contract they accepted from you.
The contract is not yet completed. It is a year late, with significant overspend estimated to bring the total contract spend to be in the region of £5 million. There are still problems with the floating bridge, as reported by the Cowes Town Council and East Cowes Town Council who represent their constituents and local business.
The lack of competence in certain key areas (The design drawings / details were approved by a contractor, as the council does not have the expertise to approve the same), as admitted in PQ 01/18 Scrutiny Committee – Tuesday, 9 January 2018, PQ 01-18 – From Neil Blues is below.
There are also concerns regarding the PWC Audit not mentioning the appointment and qualifications of the IOWC Agent as detailed in PQ 08-18 – From Mrs Lin Kemp, below.
At this stage there appears to be a concerted effort by the IOWC to prevent the Scrutiny Committee from reviewing the non-public papers by only allowing a single laptop to be used at County Hall. As there are in the region of 300 papers to review this makes it nigh on impossible.
This was reported online: see Access to Floating Bridge papers heavily restricted – Even to Scrutiny Members
Then there is the latest statement from Cllr Dave Stewart which included this: “And if people from outside were to send in 2,000 questions, they can do, but they don’t need to expect they’ll be answered, because if they are not in our priority corporate plan, that is not the best use of public money.”
Again reported online: see Scrutiny tells Leader he’ll be held accountable for his floating bridge ‘good and reasonable service’ comment
You may draw your own inference from this attempt to stifle the Scrutiny Committee and the public at large from knowing what has happened and why.
We are aware from past history that there have been a number of alleged errors of judgement made by the IOWC over the last 3 decades that have cost the Island tax payers undisclosed amounts. They are:
- The K2 Bridge project from Medham to Whippingham where the IOWC allegedly sent the bid papers to the EU 5 days to late. Mid 1990s
- The Ryde Transportation Interchange 2002 – 2007 a project that never came to fruition
- The Cowes Enterprise College 2013 and all of its build problems
- Undercliff Drive 2014
- The Floating Bridge 2017
In the near future we have the St Mary’s roundabout redevelopment without resolving the bottleneck of Coppins Bridge first.
Town Hall’s and Public concerns
Typical questions that are being asked are about major issues all of which raise concerns:
a) The rationale leading to a decision to increase the size, mass and vehicle capacity of the floating bridge, flying in the face of steadily declining usage figures. FB5 carried 458,000 vehicles in 2006, dropping to 280,000 vehicles in 2016, whilst returning a good surplus on investment and providing a safe, efficient, reliable service eighteen hours/day. There appears to be no logical reason for pursuing a larger floating bridge in the face of many warnings to the contrary. Could you elaborate on the thinking around this fundamental decision? Was there perhaps some bright forecast for increased journeys across the River Medina or projected increases in Red Funnel vehicle usage from Southampton?
b) With reference to the make-up of the project board, was there discussion about job descriptions responsibilities and was there was a need to employ a project manager with proven track record of large complex engineering works for this project? Were all parties, LEP included, happy with the IWC project managing, given their track record in recent years?
c) The appointment of an owners rep. to ‘provide technical support’, (who managed a floating bridge service in a different part of the country with different tide problems but had no engineering or technical expertise). In our view a qualified Marine Engineer would seem to be more appropriate.
d) The new vessel FB6 seems to fail to meet the initial requirements suggested in the Statement of Requirements BCTQ technical specification and Solent LEP’s Gateway Business case all around Sept 2015. Specifically:
- Reduce queuing times
- Increased daily crossings
- Shorter turnaround times
- Reduced running costs
- Improved passenger accommodation
- High mounted central wheel house with good visibility.
None of these requirements appear to have been met.
e) The design of the central wheelhouse, due to limited views of prows, has created problems with ‘docking’ and the need for more staff as one person now has to stand by the prow directing operations and signalling to the helm. The helm has to ascend and descend two flights of stairs to assist at the gates for dis/embarkation.
f) The pedestrian accommodation design (North side), necessitates people waiting only in an unsafe environment in E Cowes, boarding and leaving FB6 is very slow which reduces the number of crossings per day. The access for disabled users is poor; the upstairs area is open to the elements and is unusable for up to eight months of the year.
g) The design of FB6 is concerning. It is longer, 37.4 m vs 37.2m prow to prow, 29.7m vs 26.7m hull length, wider, 14 m vs 12.8 m, heavier, 333 tonnes vs 234 tonnes (49% heavier) laden 262 tonnes vs 175 tonnes empty (42% heavier) and taller, passenger deck 2.65m vs 0.0m above car deck, and wheel house 3.35m vs 2.3m above car deck. These increases mean FB6 is more likely to be affected by strong tidal flows and high winds than FB5 was.
h) One rather odd thing is that FB6 is operating using the same chains as FB5, even though it is 49% heavier and has different windage characteristics.
i) The things noted in points (g) and (h) are probably contributing to one of the main concerns around FB6, the depth of water over the chains and the danger of collision with shipping, highlighted by the Cowes Harbour Commissioner. Commercial shipping uses the River Medina and tens of thousands of pleasure yachts motor up and down the river throughout the year, peaking in the Summer for Cowes week and the annual Round the Island race (around 1700 yachts take part many mooring up river the day before and returning to their berths post race).
j) The lack of governance or project management; there seems to have been very few irregular progress meetings throughout the lifetime of the project. Perhaps SLEP have records of LEP attendance at such meetings?
k) The size and mass of FB6 raises questions of where it will be ‘hauled out’ for servicing. Are there any facilities except the builders where this can be accomplished? Other comments heard, albeit hearsay, at a number of public meetings include,
“It makes us wonder if the IOWC have realised that it can no longer make them the profits they wanted so is its surplus to requirements now that it is all too complicated …. It can be the only explanation for it to go from being such a priority that they needed £4m of funding for it to ‘no longer being a council priority’.”
“Refusing to listen to the Town Councils and other stakeholders including the engineers, saying it’s all cacophonous noise, so they can ignore what is being said.”
“Trying to turn the staff and stakeholders against each other by claiming abuse of staff and unfairly blaming the staff for the floating bridge’s design problems.”
“They are using the St Mary’s roundabout to create false demand to alter stats”
“Not being forthcoming with info and actively avoiding giving information out.”
“Ignoring hard core physical facts from the weight of the bridge, even when the stakeholders point out that it may be an urgent safety issue, to the noise measurements”
“The IOWC, by not having the necessary competencies, built us a bad floating bridge, but the continued lack of competence and inaction is what cost us the £0.9m, frittering away our money on fixes that won’t work and not taking decisive action early.”
“The IOWC are treating the Isle of Wight tax payers with contempt.”
What the stakeholders have and are doing
As a group we have analysed the few documents that the IOWC have allowed into the public arena.
We are aware of the requirements and contractual conditions placed by the LEP on the IOWC.
We have analysed the technical requirements specification (Burness Corlett Three Quays: BCP/J/10384/00 REPLACEMENT FLOATING BRIDGE Technical Specification Rev 0) and have found it to have significant problems. They are:
- It appears, from the numerous writing styles, to have been cut and pasted from a number of other documents
- It contains multiple requirements in single sentences and duplicated paragraph numbers
- It does not have a consistent approach to defining requirements
- It has significant requirement conflicts some of which are described in Town Hall’s and Public concerns above
- Approximately 25% of the requirements are not provable as they are subjective, all of which lead to great difficulty for proving the requirements especially as they have to be overlaid with the requirements of the Classification Society and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). Because we do not have access to the approx. 300 documents the IOWC have not released into the public domain, we are unaware if there is a mapping document of all of the requirements to the test cases that should prove them.
We realised that the Scrutiny Committee come from diverse backgrounds. In order to help them understand the significant task they faced, we generated a list of questions that we believe would help them understand the management and technical aspects of the IOWC Floating Bridge procurement.
The document Questions_for_scrutiny25012018 (below) for your understanding of our concerns.
Due to the actions of the IOWC, as detailed under “Our concerns” above, we believe that the Scrutiny Committee will be stymied in their efforts to get to the truth.
I have also attached a document (see below) produced by a member of the stakeholders group, which details the timeline of activities and incidents associated with Floating Bridge No: 6, it is identified as Floatie Timeline
We have twice offered to carry out a free, impartial, audit of the IOWC Procurement process to identify any shortfalls in it and make recommendations for improvements. To date we have had no response from the IOWC.
We have also stated to the IOWC that there is a wealth of talent available on the Island that are willing to help the council as it would help prevent significant future financial losses. Again we have had no response from the IOWC.
We are currently performing a causal and impact analysis of the project management data that is in the public domain.
Adverse Press coverage
You may have seen BBC South TV, 2nd January 2018, who filmed the floating bridge attempt to make landfall in Cowes. There has also been significant local press and social media coverage of the problems with it.
We are willing to meet with you to answer any questions you may have. We would be interested in your thoughts on the success of FB6 judged against the Solent LEP’s Gateway Business case.
“For and on behalf of the Stakeholders Group
This is an open letter and has been sent to the Managing Director of Waitrose Ltd and to members of the Press.
Timeline of events
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Questions gathered for Scrutiny Committee
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Question from Neil Blues
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Question from Lin Kemp
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Image: © With kind permission of Allan Marsh
