 I'm welcome to the third meeting of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. Just remind everyone, if I may please, to switch off your mobile telephones as they affect the broadcasting system. Obviously, as the paper's come in a digital format it's perfectly alright to use your laptops to read those. We've received apologies from Stuart Stevenson ond ond某 o bwyneid yn gweithio gyda eich cymyg. Ie'r bod yn ein bod yn ymdwg i am hoffi am y cymysgledd gan Far cheat gall Gymru beth yr eich cimru. Gweldodd fan hyn ar gyfer y cymysgledd. hersen yn iawn, bydd yn ddull â'u chwarae. Cyswbeth yn adeiligion eich cymysgledd, ac yn ddag y cymysgledd ar gyfer eich cymysgledd. Felly, rydw i'n gweithio i gweithio i'r cymysgledd. Felly rydw i'r gweithio ar gyfer fy rhai cyfiethefau, ar y wneud, i game Refadur Gwmianneidog, a siarad ag i gyd yn яw meddwl i'r ddigwydd, i gael i grantlau i gyd yn ei ffordd i gael i gyd yn ein gwstio sy'n fawr i grwmpol o'r competeda Parliament. Rhaid i gael yn gweithio i gael i gael i Gwmianneidog, mae'n rhaid i gael i Gwmianneidog i gael i gael i gael i gael i gael i'r gweithinol i gael i Gwmianneidog. Fawr y papurau yw'r gwneud i gael i gael i gael i gael i gael i gael i'r gwmpol i The team who have come in, David Clymye associate, and Lawrence Shaachman. David Morbedec, would you like to make an opening statement to the committee? Certainly convener, thank you very much. Following my brief appearance with the cabinet secretary and Keith Brown out at the end of June, I am conscious that this is our first detailed engagement with the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee and to provide an update on the four-terplacement crossing and its funding to the project, so perhaps a brief introduction is appropriate. I'm David Climy, project director for Transport Scotland, and the employer's representative for Scottish Ministers on the FRC project, a role that I've held since June 2010, having spent the previous 27 years working for contractors on major bridge and infrastructure projects around the world. My colleague, Lawrence Shackman, is project manager for Transport Scotland and deputy employer's putting ond arweithio dipped. He's held us position since 2006, he's been with you project since day one. On the 8th June this year, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Jobs advised Parliament that the opening to traffic date for the Queen士bury Cross will be May 2017, and the project will continue to be delivered within the current budget range of £1.325 to £1.35b, and I'm pleased to confirm that that remains the case today. I would like to emphasise that reaching the finishing line on this project remains challenging, particularly with the weather, and that neither the contractor FCBC nor I are under any illusion about that. However, I can assure you that everything that can safely be done is being done on the project to achieve the earliest possible opening date. The site workforce has averaged 1,196 people in the past 12 months, with a peak of over 1,300 in the spring. The highly visible progress that is being made on site is a tribute to the significant efforts of the site team, which continues to meet the challenges that arise in construction work of this size and technical complexity in often challenging environmental conditions. I look forward to welcoming committee members to the site in the near future to meet some of the dedicated workforce and to see the scale of the works at close quarters for yourselves. Focusing on progress on the principal contract recently, on the south side, the new northbound mainline carriageway is ready for traffic from the Scotston junction to the new Queensferry junction with signage, ITS gantries, whitelining and road lighting. The new southbound carriageway will receive its final surfacing in the coming weeks. Both the northbound and southbound public transport links are also nearing completion. Over the past two weekends road closures of take have been in place on the A90 and the M90 spur overnight from Saturday to Sunday to install the large sign gantries across the carriageways at Scotston. On the Queensferry crossing itself, the first deck unit was lifted into place at the north tower on 7 September last year, exactly one year ago. 93 of the 110 deck units have now been lifted into place, leaving just 17 to go before the end of this year. The first deck closure between the north approach viaduct and the north deck fan was closed on 19 July and fitted very well. In the marine yard in Rossife, all 110 steel deck units have been delivered and the last one had its concrete deck cast in place on 12 August. They have all been fitted out with internal walkways and initial mechanical and electrical works. On the viaduct, the installation of the concrete deck on the south approach viaduct is progressing northwards from the south abutment, with 22 out of a total of 42 concrete pours required having been completed. On the north side, nine out of the 12 concrete deck pours required have been completed and those are progressing to keep in balance with the lifting of deck units on the south side of the north tower. On the north side roadworks, the ferry toll viaduct is structurally complete and has been waterproofed and is currently having the road surfacing installed. This area also has wind shielding on the western side, similar to that to be used on the Queensferry crossing. An installation of that will start shortly. Work on the bridges to carry the southbound at M90 across the new ferry toll junction has been completed and the final layout of the new roundabout is clearly taking shape. Significant work has also progressed on Hope Street and in Vaquiring and both King Malcolm Drive and Castle and Hill Road in Rossife. Community relations continue to be extremely good and the level of interest and excitement around the opening of the bridge is clearly increasing. The Contact and Education Centre continues to be the focus of our public engagement programme and to date we have hosted over 15,000 school pupils presented to groups from over 27 different countries and over 59,000 people have attended a presentation on the project. In addition, the project team members have made presentations all around Scotland and elsewhere in the UK and Ireland to describe the remarkable work that is being undertaken on the project. The project has a significant digital media presence with around 50,000 people looking at the project website every month and an ever-growing audience on social media, looking at time-lapse videos and drone footage of the progress. Thank you very much for that, a fairly in-depth brief. Thank you. I think that the first question is going to come from if you would like to lead on that, please. Yes, sounds very good progress indeed, but I would like to focus on the budget in your letter to us. You said that the revised target date for opening has no impact on the budget, and the project is still within the reduced budget range of up to £1.35 billion. My question really focuses on that figure, because in the Parliament's own information service, research service to us, I am quite clear when it says that the major contract was awarded to fourth-crossing bridge constructors at £790 million. The associated intelligent transport system was awarded to John Graham, limited to £12.9 million. The third one was to upgrade the junction 1A on the M9 and it was awarded to £25.6 million. As I said, the whole thing is budgeted at £1.35 billion. The main contracts add up to £828 million, and I wondered whether you could tell me of the committee where the other half of the money has gone. Certainly, yes. This has been very transparent from day one on the project. A lot of detail has been put into the public domain about that, and we are a separate budget line within the Scottish Government budget, of course. The key elements that are involved in the budget are, as you said, the three main construction contracts. On top of that, there is non-recoverable VAT, there is inflation, there is risk and optimism bias, and the £1.35 billion, we are very clear that this covers the entirety of the project. It is everything from when the project was first started to be scoped in 2007, right through until the end of the five-year maintenance period in 2022. It includes all the land purchase, any compensation that has to be paid, all the initial design that had to be carried out, all the initial environmental investigations and so on. It is literally everything over a 15-year period from 2007 when the project first started through until 2022 when the five-year maintenance period is completed. It really covers absolutely everything, not just the construction contracts themselves. Could I ask—would it be very helpful for the committee if you could possibly put that in writing to us, the detail? The main contract is at up to £828 million, and the budget is £1.35 billion. There is a heck of a lot of money missing there, and I may not be missing, but it is missing in layman's terms. I want to know what you really write down to the nitty-gritty where that budget line has gone. I think that you might also find it helpful to look at—there was an Audit Scotland report on five major projects within Scotland that was prepared in 2014, and that did exactly what you have just described. It went through exactly where all the money is. I am quite happy to give you a link to that report and also to provide you an update on just how things have moved since then. My last comment on it—I wanted to ask really—was that it is just remarkable that there are months of delay, and yet it does not cost any more money because of the contract, which, in my own mind, is a layman on all of this, begs the question of whether the contract was over-egged in the first place. That is the point that I was wondering to make. There is no comment on that. I am quite satisfied with all the numbers. It covers a much broader range of elements than you perhaps appreciate. The detail that you will find extremely helpful in just where all the money is allocated, because it covers a very wide range of things in addition to the main construction contracts themselves. David, I think that it would be useful for us to have that broken down. I think that it would also be useful for us to know that, when the last payment is made in the sense that under compulsory purchase orders there is compensation due for road noise and any change of effects to properties for a period up and after the end of the contract. It would be interesting, I think, from the committee to know that, when the date is signed off, it will be signed off for all claims for compensation as well and that those have been allowed for. Certainly. We will include some detail on that in the information that we submit to you, yes, because it does go on for a period afterwards. You are quite correct. Thank you. I think that you have a... Yes, thank you. Given that completion was to be in December and because of whether it has been pushed back to May, are you confident that it will be completed in May next year? I am as confident as I can be that it will be opened in May of next year, yes. We have had a good three months. The progress has been extremely good. As I said, we have made good progress on erecting the deck units. There are now 17 left to go. We have overcome the first closure between the north approach viaduct and the north deck fan, which was an area, one of the only two areas on the project where the deck units had not been prefitted together to make sure that they did fit and they did fit extremely well. So we have gone through that exercise, so that is another risk that has passed. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the weather is always going to be there and it will always be an issue. The progress that we are making at the moment is very much in line with achieving the May date. We are doing a lot of work to look at, once we have finished lifting the deck units at the end of the year, the following activities that go on after that are things like removing the tower cranes, putting the water proofing and deck surfacing on the deck, making sure that we take every opportunity to do those whenever we can. Although, obviously, January, February and March are not the ideal time to be doing those sort of things, the programme that we have now allows sufficient time for those things to be done, so I have reasonable confidence that we will meet May, yes. I suppose that I am asking what is your best and what is your worst scenario. If everything goes swimmingly, are you going to be ahead of me? If things do not, how far back could it slip? Given that I am always an optimist, yes, I always hope that it will be before May, but I am also a realist and I accept that there are certain circumstances that could be after May, but at this moment it is not particularly helpful to speculate where it could end up, because I say that the main issue that could affect it, which is something that we cannot control is the weather. May is a very reasonable assumption, and that is certainly what we are aiming for. We believe that we can achieve, and the contractor believes that they can achieve, and that is what they are telling us that they can achieve. Okay, so it could be ahead of me then, that is what you are saying, because maybe your worst case is May. There is always that possibility. David, can I push you a little bit on the timescale, and perhaps you can help me? Up until February this last year—sorry, this year—you stated that the weather had been favourable, allowing additional work to be carried out. I think that, actually, you said that the good weather outweith the bad weather, allowing 24-hour working and for us to push forward. We are confident that it will be open in December of this year. Barely three months later, you have changed that to saying that 40 per cent of the time had been downtime, rather than the 25 per cent that had been forecast. So, on the basis that you were pushing ahead up until February, and you were ahead of schedule by what you said to the committee in February, how come that, barely three months later, we have gone back so far when you are only saying that there had been a change of 15 per cent in the downtime that you were forecasting? To me, that does not seem right. Perhaps you could explain that to me, David. Certainly. I am not quite sure where you are getting the February appearance from. Is your report that you put forward? Oh, a written report. Sorry, I beg your pardon. Certainly, in the appearance in front of the committee in September of 2015, and the appearance in March of 2016, we explored that in quite a great deal of detail in terms of what was possible and what was not possible. In September 2015, I said that we needed an average winter, that was what we needed at that point, to get to December 2016 opening. When I came to the committee in March of 2016, I said that we had a worse than average winter. I said that we were not where we would hope to be, but we still believed at that point, and the contractor believed at that point that we could still achieve it. I made it very clear that the weather was a challenge, that it continued to be a challenge, and that we had not had the winter that we hoped for when I explained to the committee in March of 2016. Since then, in April and May, I think that it was reasonable at the beginning of March for the contractor to expect that the weather was going to improve, that we would actually get into a better period of weather and that even though they were behind where they wanted to be, they could recover to still get there by December. What happened in April and May was exactly the contrary of that. It was significantly worse than they expected, and therefore, rather than recovering time, they were actually losing time. Realistically, you get to a point where if you are trying to recover, say, one month in 10, then that is a realistic possibility in terms of a major construction project. If you get to the point where you are trying to recover two months in seven, that really is not realistic anymore. You have to say, right, we have given that our best shot, we have thrown everything at it that we can, and we now have to say, sorry, we just aren't going to get there. The key is that if you don't make December, that pushes you effectively significantly into 2017, because you cannot at that point say, it's only just going to be into 2017 because the weather is going to be fine. That just is not realistic. The knock-on effect of losing time in April and May has a multiplying effect going into January and February. Therefore, a day lost in April or May is not equivalent to a day in January or February, so there is a multiplication factor involved in that, and that's where we are today. My problem is that it still doesn't—I understand the multiplication factor, but what you were saying up until that report is that you were ahead of schedule and that you'd had significantly more—in fact, outweighing the bad time was good times and you had 24-hour working, which you hadn't been working on. What I can't get my mind round—and I don't think that a lot of other people can get their mind round—is how having been so far ahead and being so confident at the beginning of the year that, shortly after we have a change in the Parliament, it suddenly dropped back so far. It's a reasonable question because that's what people feel out there. You said you were ahead and you're now behind in a period of three months. You've lost 15 per cent, but it doesn't—it seems more than 15 per cent in time. Sorry if I explained that. I was challenged on this in great detail at the two committee hearings in September and March. In March, I certainly did not say that we were ahead. I said that we were behind where we wanted to be when I came to the committee in March, and I went through that in a lot of detail as to why we were behind in March, because the weather had certainly been in November and December had not been good, and in January that had continued. We did get a good spill of weather in March, but that went downhill again in April and May, so I think that, in terms of what I've told to the committees of this Parliament, I've been absolutely straightforward and factual in what I've told them. I'm still struggling to understand. I know that Gail wants to ask a question on the same thing, so maybe her question will help to enlighten me. I don't know if it will. I think that what we need to keep sight of here is that the bridge is not behind schedule. The bridge was always due to be completed in June of next year, and opening in May, I think, will be a good result. Well done for getting it all back on track. We can't predict the weather. Well, maybe the Met Office can't to a certain extent, but in April and May you're right, you know things. We've all read the report about how absolutely precise this has to be. My question is on the workforce and the weather conditions. You were doing 24-hour shifts. If the weather suddenly goes, it takes a downturn. What happens to these workers that were supposed to be on shift for if you had predicted good weather and vice versa? If we get an unseasonally good winter and you're able to push on and bring the date forward, where do you get that workforce in from? Are they on standby? Do you understand what I'm saying? I understand exactly your question. We're very fortunate, as I mentioned earlier, and we do have a very flexible workforce. The construction industry is inherently one where you have to have flexible working in that you have to be able to react to exactly those sort of situations. For example, we have some particularly large concrete pours that have to be done. Once you start a concrete pour, that concrete pour has to be finished and it might take 12 hours to do. We've had a number of occasions where we've had the conditions were windy, we've had a deck unit on a barge, we've taken it out into the fourth and it sat there waiting for the wind to die down because the Met Office has predicted there's a lull coming in the wind and that lull hasn't come. Therefore, they've had to wait all day, the lull hasn't come, so it's gone back into the yard in Rothaith and they had to go back out again next day. I think that the worst case we've had of that is one that went out three days in a row and then finally we managed to get the deck lifted. The other side of that coin is that they are available so that yesterday, for example, we lifted two deck units in a day. The people are there and they're able to do the work. If the conditions are favourable, which yesterday was a great day, two deck units went up in a day and we've managed to do that, I think, on seven occasions so far. But there'll be other days when it's incredibly frustrating and they're sat there waiting to do things and they just can't do it. But certainly, FCBC has done a great deal in terms of how they work with their labour and how flexible the approach is with the labour so that at a time when they come into work and they aren't able to work, obviously they still have to be paid and they are paid. There are other occasions when they agree to work on longer to complete an operation that's already been started. So I think it's very important that we have that flexibility of workforce to achieve what we need to achieve. Thank you. Richard, do you want to ask me? You actually touched the point that I was going to ask. Wind variation. I was on the M8 as construction has been done in my area. I was on a bridge on the M8 last week and not very high up and I felt the wind. Now, how high are you on the bridge for the wind variation and that surely affects your, whether you can lift a deck and put it in place, etc. So how high are you up and as are occasions, even on a sunny day as it was last week when I was on this bridge on the M8, that wind variation can affect your work? Absolutely, fundamental to everything we do, you're quite right. It was one of the things we brought out in the technical briefing that we did for MSPs following the announcement of the change in the date. Basically, the Met Office always gives wind speeds at ground level. The deck on the bridge is at about 60 metres in height. By the time you get up to 60 metres, you can increase that wind by 50 per cent from what's being given at ground level. The cable work that we're doing at the moment is done in man baskets on either side of the tower. That's currently at a height of about 180 metres. By the time you get up to that level, you've got a factor of 90 to 100 per cent increase from the wind at ground level. I think what was quite interesting was we had a visit from the cabinet secretary who came out on 12 August, which looked as if it was going to be a nice day, and we had the BBC and the STV with us at just a deck level. There, the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour. They were able to go down and see what activities were able to proceed with the wind at that speed and also to understand just what it was like. As I mentioned earlier, I think that the committee members have come to visit the site. We'll give them the opportunity to come out and see just how different conditions can be at ground level and deck level. I think that we've got a provisional date that we're going to discuss after this meeting to come out the site. John, could you? Yes, thank you very much. First of all, I thank you for the opportunity to visit in July, which I really appreciated and gave me a much better understanding. I think that it reassured me on a number of questions that I might have asked. Given that the last time you were at the committee was in March, can you tell us just what have been the main things that have happened, the kind of key things? I think that you mentioned the first closure, so I take it that that was a key step in the last six months. Absolutely, yes, it was. That was probably, as I mentioned earlier, one of the highest risk elements that we had, because we were effectively matching together two deck sections of the day, which had never been matched together before. The north approach of Ioduct was effectively assembled as a kit of parts on the approach road on the north side, just behind the abutment, and it was launched out into position during February and March of this year. That was matched to the deck that was building out from the towers, where the deck segment had had the concrete put onto it in the yard and recite, so therefore you were putting two sections together that had never, never been matched together before. Every other section on the job had been matched fitted previously, so we knew it would fit together exactly. When we brought them together, it actually fitted extremely well. We were very pleased with the way that joint went, so that was extremely good. What has also happened, of course, is that in that area the deck lifting is now finished because we are connected to the north approach of Ioduct, so the deck lifting gantry that was in that area has now been taken away. A point that we are just coming up to, which is probably worth mentioning, is that the centre tower fan, we lifted a deck unit yesterday, which was the 19th deck unit, and by the next week we will have lifted the last one at the other end as well. At that point, we will actually have the longest freestanding balance cantilever that has ever been constructed in the world. It will be over 630 metres long, so from the centre tower there will be 320 metres either side, there waiting for the connections to either side. That is all balanced and hanging on that one tower. It is, yes. Yes. Is there a risk in that? I'll be careful how I express this. Yes, there is a risk, but it's one that has been very carefully engineered, and it's been made sure that everything has been taken account of in terms of where we can get the 100-year storm coming along while we're in that condition. It's been designed to take that loading, and that's actually the greatest loading that that particular tower will ever see once the ends are joined to the south tower and the north tower. It becomes a much more rigid structure. Perhaps the other thing I should mention, and I'm sure people will have observed it, is that structure itself is extremely flexible. When we lift a deck unit at one end, that's 750 tonnes being lifted into place, 320 metres out from the tower. Now, the tower itself is 200 metres high, and the only fixed point on that tower is at the base of it. So you have a tower that can flex backwards and forwards by about a metre and a half at the top. You have a 320 metre cantilever, and you're putting 750 tonnes at the end of it. So if you'd looked at it yesterday morning, the fan from the centre tower and the fan from the south tower pretty much aligned, if you look at it today, the south tower fan is down by about two and a half metres. So there's a significant step there. When we put the balancing unit on to the other end next week, you'll see them come better into line, but they will still be out of line. We then attach the two cables to the tower, and that pulls them up to their correct level. So I would emphasise that. For anyone looking at the bridge in the next three months between now and getting the last deck units in, it will move around like that. It's supposed to move around like that. We take very careful monitoring of the loads and the cables and the physical movement of the deck, and it's all behaving exactly as predicted by the designers. So please be reassured by that. It is expected to move, and it will move. We do to get comments from the public about that sort of thing because they're a bit concerned that it's not going to match up, but to have confidence. Have you had feedback from the public on that kind of? Yes, we have. Yes, we have. We get the right letter or email. Okay, well that's reassuring. Based on what you've just said, is it the case then that even if you were to double the workforce, you couldn't actually go faster because you've got to put the unit in before you put the cable in? It's a very sequential series of operations. Basically, you lift up the deck unit. Once the deck unit is up in position, you have to weld the steel work on the outside of it. You have to bolt the steel work. At that point, there's a stitch in the concrete deck that has to be concreted. Once that is complete, you can then install the cables exactly as you describe. There's about a three-day operation to install the cables and all the strands. You then take the load of the deck unit into those cables, and at that point you can release the lifting gantry. So it's very much a cyclic operation. And particularly with the cabling work, it's a very small area where you can actually work. So you're right, throwing extra labour at it doesn't actually achieve anything. And what will also happen going forward is that the number of work fronts that we have between now and the completion of deck lifting will actually decrease. Because, as I said, we've lifted the last deck unit on the south of the centre tower. So the next thing that happens will be that we'll dismantle that blue deck lifting gantry. Next week we'll finish the last one on the centre tower to the north and then we'll dismantle that deck lifting gantry. So that effectively takes away two work fronts from the activities. Right. And what are the other... I mean, the getting the units in and the closure are they the main steps or risks, if you like, over the next few months? Is there anything else that's kind of important or risky or key? Those are the key things and the most visible things. When obviously the road works either side, they're progressing and they'll continue to progress. I think people will be seeing those as they're driving through the scheme. But everything there is progressing well off the critical path and there's nothing there that would impact on the opening date in terms of the roads. With the bridge itself, there are certain activities that we cannot start until we actually have the bridge connected from end to end. And that's things like putting the wind shielding on because the wind shielding, excuse me, is about three metres high and the whole idea is that it deflects the wind up and over the road itself. So it takes quite a lot of load. So until we have a continuous structure from end to end, we don't want to be putting additional wind load onto the structure itself. So that needs a fully complete structure from end to end before that wind shielding can be installed. Also we have to put on the waterproofing, the road surfacing, which as I mentioned, we're looking at doing those in the winter, which is not the ideal time. So it's not a risk, it's just the fact that there'll be less opportunity to do it than would be ideal. So if the weather was bad, you can't put it on the road surface? Yes, but in a different way, it's not so much wind affected, it's more temperature, we don't want a low temperature, clearly we don't want snow. So those aspects would then come into play. But by the same token, we'll be gearing up so that we can really go at it and put a lot down when we do get the opportunities. Okay, that's helpful, thank you. Jamie, sorry, anything else on that? Jamie, I think you were next. Thank you, thanks for that update. I really don't want to dwell on the timescale issue too much. I appreciate that weather plays such an important part in something of the scale and size, but I just feel that there's an overarching feeling amongst us that for a £1.3 billion project, to say that well, it really all just comes down to the weather, just feels quite loose. Is it the case that we should be assuming the worst and then being pleasantly surprised rather than hoping for the best, to which I get the feeling we're doing at the moment? No, I certainly wouldn't characterise it as hoping for the best. I think we have a realistic programme from the contractor that has been analysed in great detail. Obviously, we were as concerned as everyone was when the date had to change. Now, if you change a date, you want to make sure that you're changing it to something that's realistic and achievable. I can say from a person what was quite a painful process going through the change in the date, and rightly so, because if you are going to change a date on something as fundamental as this, you ought to be absolutely certain that you're changing it on the best data you can possibly have. We've now got four and a half years of extremely good data of exactly what we've experienced in this location, doing this type of work. So I think we've taken into account everything we possibly can take into account in terms of what can be done going forward. In terms of guaranteeing it, no, we cannot guarantee it. But by the same token, we're not saying that this is absolutely the best that we can do either. I think that it's a realistic date going forward. The contractor has looked at it in great detail and it's the right way to go forward. Okay, thank you. I'd like to just have a brief question to you on health and safety on site. I was wondering if you could update us on progress of investigations into the tragedy of early in the year, and also just in general, an assessment of health and safety and any changes or developments that have happened since then? Certainly. Obviously, the tragic fatal accident in April was a great shock to the project and a great setback to us all. It was one thing that we were focused on. We wanted to have a very safe project with nobody being killed on the project. That was absolutely our fundamental requirement. What has happened since then is that health and safety executives are still investigating those things tend to be fully drawn out and that they want to talk to everybody who is in the vicinity at the time and make sure that they have all the information that they can possibly gather. Although the investigation is on-going, what is important to emphasise is that in the very early stages, the first thing that they focus on are the fundamental flaws in the health and safety culture, or health and safety management, or health and safety processes on the site. If there are, then they would put measures into place very quickly to make sure that those were dealt with and that could be something such as a prohibition order or a stop-work order or something like that. That did not happen on this job. They came in, they looked at the procedures, the management, the processes and were satisfied that they were all correct and were all in place. Regressively, even with all those things in place, tragic accidents can still happen. There is always a human element, but I can't speculate on the final outcome of the health and safety investigation. I suppose that the most troubling part of it, in terms of my view of it and the FCBC project director's view of it, is that we take on so many big risks and big challenges in doing a job of this size, and those are all deeply analysed or preparation and work goes into them to make sure that nothing like this can happen. That is a real focus. The activity that was going on with the fatality occur, was a routine bit of maintenance or a bit of plant that could have been in use on any work construction site around the UK. That was, I think, the biggest frustration to us that it was not a big thing that was directly related to the construction. Regressively, within our industry, that is very often the case that it is the everyday mundane things that come and bite you. That is deeply regrettable, I think, to our whole industry, but something that we are very conscious of. In terms of, has anything specifically changed? No, it hasn't, because of the issues, because of the points that I've raised. When nothing fundamentally identified as being wrong, obviously we do look very hard at all our activities all the time and will continue to do so. But Michael Martin, the project director, is very clear about it. Safety is his number one priority. He reinforces that to every new starter on the project and to every activity that we do. And that will continue to be the case until we finish. And obviously we have to be very, very careful about complacency or getting close to the end when people are taking their eye off the ball. That's extremely important. Okay, I think that we've got some questions now on community engagement. Richard Joghett has laid on that. Again, good morning, Mr Claymore. Can I turn to the fact that community engagement, I know you've said that you're involved in school, kill children, basically putting drones up, letting people see on the internet except for how you're doing. I've also, as I said earlier, got a major road work done in my constituency, the M8M74. And quite a lot of concerns from businesses and local residents in regard to road closures and different other things, sound baffling ffencing. Can you tell me what you're actually doing? Can you give us an update on any new issues of concern that have been raised with you by local residents or businesses and how you're tackling them over the last six months? Yeah, I think as the projects continued, community relations have actually got better and better as we've got through the project. I think at the beginning, when you start out on site, there's a lot of concern from the local residents in particular about what's going to happen, the impact that the works are going to have on the local communities. So right back at the bill stage and before the bill stage of the project, we engage with the local communities, the community councils and the local authorities in particular to try and build consensus as much as we possibly could. We built a lot of good feeling and goodwill, I think, through developing the code of construction practice, which is basically the contractor's bible. If you don't know, that sets the limits for noise, vehicle routing, prohibited routes, working hours, all these kind of things. It's a very public document, so the public know exactly what we should be doing as the monitors of the project. So, in particular, the community forums have been set up, they've been running every three months through the project. We tell the community, people from the community, what we've been doing over the last period, show them graphic images of the works in progress to explain what's happening and, very importantly, we talk about what's going to happen in the next three months or into the future so that there's basically no surprises or we try to limit disruption as much as possible, that kind of thing. So, coming to your question, more recent issues have focused around traffic management changes, what impacts they might have on the travelling public, both on the strategic road network. The last couple of weekends, for example, we've put overhead gantries, the intelligent transport system gantries in place around the Scotston junction on the south side of the project. People were well informed at community level and at national level on the road network, we advertised those works on the gantry network so that people were aware of the works that were going to happen, did the works during the middle of the night to minimise the disruption to the travelling public and, of course, we talked about that at the community forums as well. So that's one example of trying to tell people about what we're going to do and then realising those works in the best possible manner to minimise disruption. I think we've dealt with a huge number of issues over the last five years, I suppose. And those issues have varied at the beginning. There was concerns about the site setup, that kind of thing, making sure that the local communities were kept quiet and noise free as much as possible, that we minimised dust and dirt on the roads, things like that. So we were very vigilant looking at the various issues raised there and trying to stave them off as much as we possibly could before they occurred. And then, in more recent times, we're looking at the more practical operation of the road network. For example, Queen's Free District Community Council recently were concerned about how the new road at the Queen's Free Junction was going to operate in comparison with the existing road setup. And I think I was able to try and minimise their concerns as much as possible until the road actually opens. It's very difficult to know exactly how the road will perform, but there's a lot of new engineering built into the road network, particularly the intelligent transport system, for example, to try and control traffic and smooth the flow out and minimise disruption as much as possible. We have roads designed to the appropriate design standards, that kind of thing. The other strand of what we do is very much focused on the education aspects, which David mentioned earlier. The Contact and Education Centre, which is actually also part of the scheme costs as well, that building was part of the project cost, was established back in January 2013. And as David said, we've had around 15,000 pupils come through learning about bridge engineering, science, technology, maths, those sorts of subjects, pupils of all different age ranges. The last three years, and we certainly did it very recently, we wrote to every school in Scotland to invite them to come to the premises, to take part in those activities. And I think we're pretty well booked all the way through this next academic year. And we have a lot of repeat visitors from schools as well. And if you remember, back in, I think, October last year, the Cabinet Secretary came to celebrate the 10,000th pupil actually visiting the Contact Centre. So that's a really good way of educating people about engineering and not just the hard engineering side of things, looking out the window and seeing the three bridges, but the wider maths and science and technology side of things. So hopefully that will spur people on to take up those sort of subjects in the future. Then we have a lot of interest from around the world, other parts of the UK, a lot of engineering interest obviously. But we get groups of all different persuasions, whether they're scout groups, whether they're probus clubs. So we have a very high demand for not only site visits and site presentations in the Contact Centre, but we also send members of the team out elsewhere in Scotland and around the UK to do presentations and conferences and to try and spread some of the lessons that we've learned on the project around the country. Taking on board all the things that you're doing and the costs and the contract, etc. Have you given the commitment that after the contract has been done that you will go back and recheck in particular traffic noise and given the commitment that if so required you will put up fencing to cover that and there's a reason why I'm asking that question. Yes. There's the noise regulations which require us to go back and do a check on the actual noise levels one year after opening, five years after opening, 10 years and 15 years after opening to do a check to see that what we actually predicted at the beginning of the project and what was basically taken forward through the bill process is actually what's delivered in terms of all the mitigation that's been put in place in terms of your noise barriers and earth buns that you mentioned before. So we have to do a check on that and if the measures don't add up then we have to do something about that either in terms of putting in noise insulation or perhaps building more buns and noise barriers but that's normally fairly unusual hopefully the sums have been properly addressed during the design phase and the assumptions made are borne out in the future. So there is a mechanism to monitor noise through the next 15 years of operation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. I was worried we might be getting on to another traffic scheme which I'm glad we're not going to. John, I think you were going to ask some questions about transport strategy. Thank you, convener. Good morning and thanks for your briefing. As we've heard, the project's certainly more than the construction the excellent construction work that's on going and part of that is the public transport strategy. Now you've alluded to that in your response, Mr Glynne. But it's very similar to what we heard last time. Now I appreciate that there's a lot of people involved in it. There's the various councils, there's Transport Scotland and indeed that your meetings are by annual with the next one scheduled for autumn. And what was that wee bit suspicious when it's a seasonal day rather than a month or a particular week? Are you able to give some outline as to what's happened in the interim period since you were last here with regard to public transport? Because it's important that this investment isn't simply for car users that the public transport users benefit as well. Sure. That's true. And I think what one thing I want to emphasise is that part of the public transport strategy specifically relates to the project, the FRC project. And obviously that's the use of the existing Forth Road Bridge going forward. And one thing that's been going on in the past few months is that we've actually gone out to consultation in terms of the traffic that we'll be able to use the Forth Road Bridge under the new road orders once the Queensferry crossing is opened. So if we've gone into clarification in terms of obviously the intention is it should be a public transport corridor for basically buses, taxis, pedestrians, cyclists and certain categories of motorcyclists. And particularly on the motorcyclist issue there was a question raised there where there seemed to be a slight gap in which motorcyclists could use the Queensferry crossing and which would be able to use the Forth Road Bridge. And that was drawn to our attention by some of the motorcycling groups and that was very helpful in us being able to evolve the traffic orders so that now when we've gone out to consultation we've been able to make sure that that gap no longer exists. So if everyone on a motorcycle will be able to use either one crossing or the other there's no one who will not be able to use it. So that consultation has been completed with her comments back on it and that's progressing extremely well. So I think in terms of the specific project-related activities those have made some significant progress over the past few months. In terms of the wider public transport strategy I think I'll let Lawrence talk about that. Yes, as you say basically the public transport strategy working group which was formed some five maybe six years ago now and is a meeting of the local transport authorities regional transport authority and the bus operating companies and latterly rail as well. And we've as part of the project we try to implement as many public transport measures as we possibly could when we were actually developing the contract. So I don't know whether you're aware that we incorporated a bus hard-solder running scheme within the FIFITS contract and within the junction 1A contract and they've been operational for three years now and they're used by around 10 to 12 buses every morning to try and jump the queues which result normally from the from the fourth road bridge. So they've been largely successful so far and obviously we won't realise all the benefits of the public transport corridor that we're providing until the whole project is complete. We've also undertaken or we're in the middle of undertaking some improvement works at Ferrytoll Park and Ride. There's actually a temporary setup at the moment while construction works are on going there and that's part of the main contract to increase the circulatory area for buses and separate the entrances and exits for buses and the motor cars to make it much more to work much more efficiently and there are also bus priority measures into and out of the park and ride around the new Ferrytoll junction. So a lot of those measures have already been incorporated into the project and obviously having the fourth road bridge as a public transport corridor we were trying to make the most of that during the design phase and worked with the public transport working group colleagues to incorporate into the project these public transport link roads on the south side of the fourth road bridge which link seamlessly into the existing bus lane on the A90 into Edinburgh. So when the whole project is open you'll be able to either park at the Halbeath Park and Ride which was opened around three years ago and I think the patronage there is increasing all the time. You can get on a bus there and use the bus hard shoulder running if it's in the peak period facility through the M90 and Fife. The bus is nearly all of them stop if I think all of them do actually stop at the Ferrytoll park and ride pick up more passengers there seamlessly across the fourth road bridge and use the public transport links into the bus lanes all the way through to Barnton. So we've tried to optimise as much as we can in terms of bus traffic. The group looking forward is looking at further improvements on the route corridor which would be realised outwith the project team as such. And the most recent focus has been on the new bridge junction which is right at the very south end of our road corridor and seeing what improvements can be made to help bus circulation in particular around that junction and on its approaches. And that there's been a report jointly produced by Edinburgh Council or jointly funded I should say by City of Edinburgh Council, West Lothian Council and Transport Scotland to see what the best measures are to take forward. And I think that that will be the focus of the next public transport working group meeting. Thank you very much for that. Just to confirm that both the councils mentioned are on the south side of the bridge. I take it as engagement with Fife Council as well. Very much so, yes. And the role of Transport Scotland is that an overarching one given that and I'm delighted that new bridge is considered there because it shows that the effects of the improvements are going to take place are going to impact way beyond. So you know no point in improving something if it just creates a log jar elsewhere. That's right. I think I mean just to give you an example on the north side, the park and ride site at Halbeath was promoted by Fife Council but the funding eventually I think the vast majority of that funding actually came from Scottish Government via the intervention of Transport Scotland. Okay, thank you very much indeed. Okay. Peter, I think you've got it. Thanks, convener. And thanks for a very good update on where we are. I would like to ask a wee bit more about the old bridge. You mentioned it just now but I mean it's going to be buses, taxis and motorcycles and that's it as far as the old bridge is concerned. It seems to me that there's going to be a huge cost to upkeep that structure for a very limited use. Is there no more what could do with that old bridge and I'm saying it's an old bridge. It's only 50 years old I believe. It seems a very limited use and there's going to be an upkeep cost and I just feel that maybe we should look at that again and take some pressure off the new bridge because in my experience across an odd bridge on a regular basis there are queues more on a night. Are you telling me that there won't be queues on the new bridge morning and night and if so can we do more with the old bridge? Is my question really. I think that's a good point and I think that the fourth road bridge I mean I'd like to remember at the very start of this project that thought was that the fourth road bridge would not be able to be used for anything at all in the fact that the cables were going to continue to deteriorate. Obviously the installation of the de-medification equipment has been very successful in slowing down or stopping altogether the corrosion in the cables. Fairly early on in the project we were able to develop what we call the managed crossing strategy which started using the fourth road bridge as a public transport corridor. That started to use it for some things and obviously that could be developed further in the future. In terms of the managed crossing strategy we've already looked at the potential to put a light rail system. I hesitate to use the word tram but something like that perhaps across the fourth road bridge. But certainly I think once you take the heavy goods vehicles of the fourth road bridge that's the key in terms of the longevity of the fourth road bridge. Also the other benefit of any maintenance that's required to be done on the bridge obviously is a great deal simpler if you have far less traffic on it and you can put the traffic onto one carriageway and carry out the maintenance on the other carriageway. So it can make what the maintenance that does need to be done quicker and cheaper in terms of actually doing the maintenance. But I think in terms of how the bridge might be used in the future that's probably for others to decide out with this particular project. The fourth road bridge is going to be there. It's going to be maintained and who knows what it might be used for in the future. Transport modes generally may change dramatically in the next 20 to 30 years. I really don't know. But it's going to be there. It's certainly going to be usable. And if it were to be revisited in the future as to how it might be used that's certainly possible. Yes. Just to carry on from that. I mean, as I said, I think the old bridge is something about 50 years old only 50 years old. You know, it's a very short lifespan. What is a lifespan for the new bridge? How long is that going to be fully usable? As a design life of 120 years. 120 years. Yes. And probably we should always remember. I mean, we've got the classic structure of the fourth bridge there. It's already 126, 106, 107 years old and it's still functioning very well carrying everything that it needs to carry. I think that sets us a very good example of how we should be designing and what we should be designing. Perhaps we should also remember that at the time that was designed it was shortly after the T-bridge disaster. So obviously that was in their minds when they designed the fourth bridge. So it has to be a balance, I think, between designing something for an infinite design life and designing it for a reasonable design life. But the Queensferry crossing is designed for 120 years. I hasten to say that doesn't mean it has to close on 120 years plus one day. So that's the design life which it's expected to last for. I think what we've done with the Queensferry crossing is we've really considered maintenance and operation in a lot of detail at the planning stages. So we've built in ease of maintenance and ease of operation and also health and safety as well so that if someone needs to inspect any part of the bridge, the inside workings of the bridge, inside the towers to check the cable stay anchorages and that kind of thing, they can access the bridge by going through the deck not actually having to stop on the hard shoulder on the deck and walk across to the towers. So there's a lot of actual physical facilities built in to the bridge itself, access the bridge through the two abutments at either end. There's a lot of health monitoring systems as we call them which are actually being retrofitted to some extent on the fourth road bridge to monitor how it's performing. Well, those will be installed from day one on the new Queensferry crossing. So we'll be able to look and see how the bridge is actually performing in real time as it goes through its design life and beyond, hopefully. I mean, the thing, the problem with the old bridge is the cable. I mean, you've still got miles of cable in the new bridge which is different about the cable than this time from last time round if this one will do 120 in the old one and only did 50. The beauty with the Queensferry crossing is that the cables can be replaced without disrupting the traffic. The cables themselves, and when you come to site, hopefully you'll be able to see what the cables are made up of, but they have individual strands within them and the number of individual strands within each of those cables, the white cables that you see as you go past the bridge, varies depending on where you are in relation to the towers. So the cables closest to the towers tend to have more of these strands in than the ones further away. And not only can you replace a whole cable, but you can replace individual strands by pulling them through into the bridge deck or into the towers. So they can be replaced at any time in the future with minimal disruption. Okay, thank you. Okay, Richard, you've got a small question. Small just to follow on for that and I agree with Peter Chapman. Golden Gate Bridge, near the 100 years old, 4th World Bridge 50, just over 50, Queensferry crossing, you've answered the question I was going to ask. But in regards to what Peter was asking, could you recable the 4th World Bridge once there's had any traffic on it for future posterity? In theory, yes, it could be done. Basically, what you would need to do is you'd have to completely construct a new cable above the existing cable and then what you would do is you'd transfer the load from the old cable onto the new cable. So it can be done. It's obviously a very difficult process to do it, but it's easier when you have less traffic underneath. Obviously, that's the key. That was the main objection to trying to replace the cable on the 4th Road Bridge rather than building entirely new crossings. The new bridge, as you say, has cables going down individual cables and individualised cables, whereas the old bridge has basically a wraparound sort of main cable. But if we could do that, if we were so minded? If we were minded to it, it could be done, but it's an extremely difficult process. Technically, it's possible, but it's not an engineer, so it's nothing I would recommend. It could be done. Thank you. Richard, Mike, as a quick one, please. A question following on from Peter's questions to you. I just wanted to check if, in future, the political decision is made to actually utilise the current bridge for traffic if the future use of the new bridge is full of traffic. I wanted to confirm with you a simple question, really, that the design of the approach roads to the bridge is not going to be a problem to transfer traffic from the new bridge to the old bridge if that's what a future Government wanted to do. It's possible to do it. It's not a case of you can say that you can switch. The new Queensbury Cosm would be a motorway running at 70 miles an hour. You would not be able to run at 70 miles an hour all the traffic that's on the Queensbury crossing onto the fourth road bridge. That's clearly not practical in terms of connecting roads. What you can do is, if you want to put more traffic onto the fourth road bridge, yes, there are connecting roads at both ends. That will work. There are. Sorry, David. Just to follow up slightly on that, if I may. Obviously, when it's windy, we notice the restrictions on the... I'm going to join with everyone because I'm over 50 here, not so old bridge, and say that we might have to divert buses from that bridge to the new bridge during incredible windy periods. That's going to be a seamless transition, which will just happen through gantry signs, and there will be no issues with it. It's designed to be a very smooth transition, and if buses need to use the Queensbury crossing, they will be able to very easily, yes. It is literally flicking a switch on a sign to tell them to go all the route, yes. Okay. We've got another section that we'd like just to lead off on, which is with... to actual the workforce. Marie, would you like to lead on that please? Yeah, and it's just been fascinating listening to you so far this morning, because I think it's just an incredible engineering project and just hearing the detail of it, and I was fortunate enough to visit a similar structure in Mio, the viaduct there, and I guess it'll be... Yeah, it's just a really interesting project. But really, it was just in terms of the workforce, really, because I think when we have, you know, something of this scale and size, I just think that, you know, the trainees and the apprentices, that's a vitally important part of it, so it was really just wanting to know what's been happening around that and what are the current numbers of trainees and apprentices that are involved in the project? No, I think that you're right. It's vitally important that we take the opportunity to maximise the training that we can get out of this. I think that Lawrence touched on it earlier on in terms of getting young engineers encouraged and being able to take over from us in the future. I want people to be as enthusiastic about future projects as we are about this one, so it's vitally important. If you catch them young, that's absolutely the best time to do it. In terms of the workforce and the training in particular, we did build in some requirements within the contract itself to try to encourage these areas and the specific areas that we focused on, so we said that in the principal contract, which is the one that FCBC are constructing, we wanted them to deliver an annual average of 45 vocational training positions, 21 professional body training places, and 46 positions for the long-term unemployed, and that was an annual average each year through the construction period. We started off with lower numbers than that, and FCBC volunteered those higher numbers as part of their winning tender, so that's what set the bar in terms of what needed to be achieved. What we've managed to date is that the cumulative annual average on vocational training is 111 per year against a target of 45. In terms of professional training, our cumulative annual average is 32 compared to our target of 21, and in the long-term unemployed, our cumulative annual average is 49 compared to the minimum requirement of 46. Each year, we've achieved or bettered the target for the year. In terms of apprentices, they come into the vocational training category under the SVEQ system. We've had to date a total of 20 apprentices who have gone through the system. We're still working on the project. Of those, eight are working from Fife, Lothian or Edinburgh, and four are from elsewhere in central Scotland. In areas such as civil engineering technicians, electricians, a welder and fabricator and business administrators. Of those who have finished their apprenticeships with us, two of them have gone on to full-time employment with FCBC on the project. A lot of time and effort has gone into the training overall. In addition to that, we've had 15 members of our team, that's the employer's delivery team, have become chartered engineers while on the FRC project. They've gone through their three to four-year training period and become fully qualified chartered engineers. Also, we've had summer students working with us from various universities around Scotland. They've come from Edinburgh University, Aberdeen, Abertau, Cambridge, Strathclyde, Herriot-Watt, Bristol and Dundee. We've covered a wide range of university placements as well working with us. Overall, a lot of effort has gone into as much training as we possibly can throughout the period. Overall on the project, we've averaged, as I said, just under 1,200 people working on the project at any given time. Of those people, about 46 per cent of them have home addresses in Edinburgh, Lothian and Fife, and 40 per cent have home addresses elsewhere in Scotland. Although it is quite an international project, I think that we've had 23 different nationalities working on the project, a lot of them are actually local people as well. That's great. It was just to say that that was really good to be my next question, was what the local element of that would have been. Thanks for that information. Gail. Thank you, convener. It was very much like Mari. I've just found the whole thing absolutely fascinating. I just want to say that the bridge looks absolutely beautiful. I was really struck by the picture that you had always three bridges from space. I think that it's just fantastic. It really is going to be an iconic scene in Scotland. It's such a major infrastructure project. I don't know what the last one was of such a scale. Touching on what you said about apprenticeships and trainees, that's also the advantage of having such a big project that takes such a long time to complete, is that you can have people getting qualifications on the job, which is amazing. I just wanted to touch on the community side, the public engagement, the skills engagement, which I think is absolutely vital. I'm really pleased that you've made contact with all schools in Scotland, because although it's a project that's very relevant to this area, it's relevant to the whole country. Coming from WIC, I think that it's probably correct to say that schools in the constituency of Cadence, Sutherland and Ross would probably find it a lot more difficult to do a site visit than ones more locally would. I noticed that you had a little bit in your project update about the National Women in Engineering Day. I know that, certainly locally, we've had quite a drive to try and encourage more women into the STEM subjects through school and then onwards as well. I wonder if you could tell me how many women you have working on site on the project. If you can't tell me that, maybe you could get back to me. I was really quite touched to see the involvement of the veterans that built the other bridge as well. I thought that that was fantastic. I just wanted to, essentially, congratulate you on your level of community engagement. I think that it's been fantastic. If you can get back to me with the gender split, I would be very grateful. Despite all the wealth of information that I have for you, that's one area that I haven't covered. I'll need to come back to you with detail on that. To pick up your point on the veterans, it's something that we engage with them quite early on. The level of interest and fascinating stories that they have is just incredible. We've had three visits for them so far during the duration of the project. It's really fascinating for our younger engineers to engage with them and hear how much things have changed in the 50-plus years since the Forth Road bridge was constructed. In terms of health and safety and issues like that, it's like night and day. It really is in terms of just how things are dealt with. Something do change, some don't. The engineering principles of the construction don't change. They're still exactly the same. It's fascinating to just hear that side of the story too. Thank you. Ryder, I think you had a question on... Yes, thank you. Can I ask about blacklisting? Is there an insurance to keep a watching brief on this? Can I ask what steps you've taken to monitor this? What action you've maybe taken as well? It's something that we take very seriously. FCBC takes very seriously as well. It's something that I challenge FCBC on a regular basis. I've asked the project director if there's ever been any question of it. Is there any issue that's been raised about it to FCBC? No issues have been raised to FCBC on the subject. No companies that are involved with the project have ever indulged in blacklisting for this project. I've raised that reassurance again this week from the FCBC project director. He's categorically stated that no one involved in the FRC project has anything to do with blacklisting. It's completely unacceptable. Is there a way for a worker or a potential worker who feels they have been blacklisted to raise that directly and have that investigated? There is, yes. We have a whistleblowing policy on the project. Both the parent companies of FCBC have their own individual company hotlines and ways of contacting them. There's also a whistleblower policy on the site that is put forward and made known to people when they come for their initial site induction on the project. Yes, there is an avenue where a whistleblower could contact a confidential helpline to flag up any concerns that they might have. What about somebody who feels that they haven't been employed on the project because they have been blacklisted previously from a company involved? Is there a way for them to flag that up to yourselves? If there were to be someone in that position, I would ask them to contact Transport Scotland and let us know. We'd certainly investigate thoroughly. To date, we've had no approach on that subject, but if anyone feels they are in that position, if they were to contact us at Transport Scotland, we have an enquiries line where they can contact us and it will be thoroughly investigated. Thank you. Any other questions? I have one further question that you perhaps could enlighten me. When I was going through the previous papers, I noticed that there was an incident where some concrete was allowed to slip into the sea below the crossing. I couldn't find the results of the investigation into that and I couldn't find the results to what remedial action had been taken in relation to this incident. Perhaps you could just enlighten me. First of all, can I clarify? It was an alleged incident that took place. We were notified of it two months after it allegedly happened, which of course does make it quite difficult to investigate. If someone had been that concerned about it, the way to do it would have been to flag it up immediately at the time when, obviously, something can be investigated in detail. We were first made aware of it regrettably through the press two months after it allegedly happened. There was a wildly exaggerated claim that several hundred tonnes of concrete had been dumped into the fourth. A, physically, that isn't possible with the logistics that we have on the site, delivering all the concrete via barges. That would have meant that we'd had to have two barges completely full of concrete dumped into the fourth. A, that's a very stupid thing to do commercially. We've got far better things to do with our concrete. It just isn't something that the contractor would do. It would be very visible for miles if that amount of concrete had been put into the fourth. The investigation did take place. What appears to have happened is that a concrete pour had taken place and there was some cleaning out of the lines being done after the concrete pour had been completed. Normally that material is retained within basins within the barge itself. For some reason, at the very end, the hose was put over the site and therefore there was some discoloured water that was discharged into the fourth itself. SIPA were fully involved with our investigation on this. We took them through exactly what had happened. We also, just to confirm, to have a very detailed log of all the concrete that's batched on the site. Because we've batched all our concrete on the site and you want to know where every cubic metre of that concrete has gone. The track of 50 cubic metres of concrete has been batched. We know exactly where that 50 cubic metres of concrete has gone on the site. We checked through that as well to make sure that every cubic metre of concrete was accounted for and it was. We completed the investigation. We rebreefed all the crews because it's still not acceptable for wash-out to be going into the fourth either. That is not acceptable. The crews were fully rebreefed on the subject and we closed out the matter with SIPA on that basis. OK, thank you. That's some reassurance because I think that when I was reading back at some stage it was mentioned it was 348 tonnes and I think that that had been a decrease from an incredibly large amount which I don't think even I could have missed not being there so I'm delighted that it appears not to be the incident it was and thank you for updating us on that. Are there any other questions that the committee would like to ask? David Lawrence, thank you very much for coming to the committee. We are going to have an informal discussion in the committee about coming out to visit and I know some people are looking forward to that more than me. I'm terrified of heights so I should be staying in the middle of the bridge and I won't be going out to the end of a cantilever because it just terrifies me but we have got a date I think and we are going to ask you to come back again I think in December to give us an update on how things are progressing and there is always the opportunity that if you feel there's something important that should be bought for the committee to let us know because I think it's important it's a two-way process. So thank you very much for coming in and thank you for the evidence that you've given. Thank you. I look forward to seeing you on the project site. Thank you. Now I'm told formally close the meeting so that the meeting is formally closed but I would ask the committee just to stay in place so we can have a quick discussion afterwards. Thank you.