 Gищawr, ruchefrwyddwyr, i ddarfiaf yn 2016 i cyf variable o ffòb myndfaith yn callol 안�w Sierra r Hac Clerk. Fynau i ddweud yn ddatganiad i'r niferfawr honno fel y cyf기로ch chef erase. Adygwiwr y dweud yn dyts Cabellol ydy cyfrylybiad diwrnod o 4 esturi transport authority Feta, councillor Leslie Hines, City of Edinburgh Council and final convener of Feta between 2013 and 2015. Mr Phil Wheeler, former City of Edinburgh councillor and convener of Feta between 2009 and 2011, and councillor Ian Chisholm, five council and former board member of Feta between 2007 and 2015. I also welcome Barry Colford, former chief engineer and bridge master. I just say that Mr Colford has went to the trouble of travelling from Philadelphia in the United States to join us for our evidence session this morning, so we are very grateful to him for that. It looks as if you have swapped one lot of inclement weather for another, Mr Colford, but welcome. Finally, I welcome Chris Tracey, former engineering services manager at Feta. councillor Hines has indicated that she would like to make an opening statement, so if you would like to do that, councillor Hines. First of all, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee and I will take a few minutes, if you do not mind, because I think it is very important in terms of the reputation of the people who are sitting here and also for the previous Feta. I also hope that you found the written material sent, which was useful for the committee. As you know, all this material is available to the public, and Feta was a local democratic and publicly accountable organisation who made decisions at a local level and all meetings and papers were available to the public. Press and also Transport Scotland. The reason I mentioned Transport Scotland is reading the record of your meeting last week. I can assure you that Transport Scotland were kept informed and involved in all decisions taken by Feta. The draft papers for the board were sent to them, the attended board meetings and regular meetings were held between the bridgemaster in Transport Scotland. The light touch, I think, was the word that was used last week, as not the words I would describe as a relationship between Feta and Transport Scotland, and in particular over the last couple of years of Feta. I would like to put on record my thanks to the staff who worked for Feta and the dedication, hard work and commitment to keeping the fourth road bridge open over the years of the Feta board. I have chaired many organisations over my years as a councillor, and rarely I have seen the dedication, knowledge and expertise of the staff of Feta. Under their leadership and Feta board, we kept the bridge open apart from severe weather conditions. I just want to go over three decisions that were taken by other people, which were significant in my view for Feta in terms of maintenance, management and governance. The bridge tolls were abolished in February 2008, which was the result of a loss of up to £12 million per annum, which was used at that time to service the debt of the building of the first of all, the fourth road bridge, and then used borrowing capital for bridge maintenance. Feta then had to either use its reserves, which it did, and apply for capital funding from Transport Scotland. There was regular discussion with Transport Scotland regarding capital funding and maintenance requirements with the bridge master, and then that would come to the Feta board meetings. Therefore, instead of Feta being able to plan for future investment, it was uncertainly sometimes over capital funding for Feta, and now relied on the majority of the funding from Transport Scotland. So that was one reason. Second was the spending review, which took place in 2011. A 58% cut on indicative capital budget set by Feta were 2012-13 onwards for future capital maintenance. Following that cut, the prioritisation exercise was undertaken on non-committed schemes, those committed schemes. You will have appendix 3, which again I was quite surprised that Transport Scotland didn't recognise the 58% cut, because it's in a paper on 16 December 2011, which they would have got a copy of, which makes it very clear in there that there was a 58% from the indicative capital plan approved by the board. Within that document, appendix 3, that was sent, you will see that there was priority. I'm not going to details, we might cover that later. Because of the reduction of this funding, the trust end links remedial works did not go ahead. Thirdly, on December 2008, the Scottish Government announced the retention to build a new fourth road bridge, and in April 2010 set out the case for a single body to manage the two bridges. In February 2013, a fourth road bridge would transfer the responsibility, they decided from Feta to Scottish ministers and dissolve Feta. The option to keep Feta and review its governance and operation was not recommended, as I understand by Transport Scotland to ministers and they agreed its abolition and transfer of the maintenance, etc. to a private company was decided to be responsible for the management and maintenance of the two road bridges, and staff would transfer from the public sector to the private sector. End of May 2015, Feta abolished, and I just want to just for finally just to talk about the last two years of Feta where I was convener, and there was two issues the board discussed at length and scrutinised, which gave them grave concerns. One was keeping the bridge open, having enough capital to ensure the ongoing maintenance of the bridge, and how we promise work as a capital funding continued to reduce. At every board meeting in the last year, we were all concerned about the level of capital expenditure and the future investment in the bridge to ensure that it was kept open. Secondly, keeping the senior management of the bridge under the hand until the handover, who had the expertise, knowledge and trust of the staff and board. The concern of the board was so severe that if the senior staff left, especially the bridge master, could Feta be sure of the continued good management of the bridge. I say that they were so concerned, they set up a sub-committee of the board to discuss staffing issues and actions they might take to keep the senior staff. Because of the concerns of the senior staff, myself, Tony, who unfortunately cannot be here as a vice convener, met them individually and voiced their deep concerns about the transfer to a private company and their role in the new structure. With myself, Tony and Sue Bruce, the then chief executive, we met a number of meetings with staff of Transport Scotland, including the head of Transport Scotland, to press our concerns about the present and future management of the existing bridge. We were given assurances, but there could be no doubt that Transport Scotland was well aware of Feta board's concerns regarding loss of key staff and the effect that this would have on the future management and maintenance of the bridge. Finally, I personally, and I am sure that other people from Feta have been quite upset by the headlines about regarding Feta. On one hand, we are being blamed for not carrying out work on the trust's end links five years ago, even though we did not make the cut in the funding. On the other hand, this failure has nothing to do with the work and is not to where the fault had occurred. It cannot be both. I apologise for the perhaps the opening dress being so long, but it is important that the facts are laid out and who made the decisions. I have not gone into any engineering issues, because I am sure that other people are far more expert than I am on that, but for the last two to three years I have become more of an expert in terms of engineering. To finish off, one of my concerns was, and was, voiced, was that it was almost like as if the bridge was just another road. The fourth bridge is not another road, as we can see. It is thriving for the economy of Edinburgh for Fife and for Scotland as a whole. Have we seen the effect that that has had with the closure? I think that we need to take that into account. It is a structure, a complicated structure. It is a bridge, it is not a road, and that was one of our concerns as we handed over the bridge, the attitude perhaps, of the people. Thank you. Thank you very much, counsel Hynd. I think that we all share your closing comment about the importance of the bridge to the people and the economy of Scotland. That is obviously why we are having this inquiry. I am going to hand over to our vice convener, Adam Ingram, to kick off our questions this morning. Adam. Thank you, convener, and welcome everyone. The first question really is, you will be aware from last week's evidence session that the cause of the failure of the trust end link was that the pin connecting the lower end of the link to the trust had seized, and that the resulting psychical stresses caused fatigue failure. Firstly, would you agree that it makes sense to you that this is the cause of the failure? Secondly, were you surprised at the failure? Perhaps Mr Colford would be the appropriate person to ask firstly on that point. Obviously, I would find it difficult to comment on engineering matters where I have not been directly involved. I have obviously been following the events of the since the closure, but it is difficult for me to comment on the actual method and mechanism of the failure, given that I have not been closely involved in the analysis of that failure. Would it be a surprise to you that that particular element of the trust end link was the cause, if you like, of the failure? As I said, it is difficult for me to comment, because I do not know what mechanism I understand from the comments made last week at the meeting that the early indications are has been that the pin has seized, but until I saw the engineering reports and made a decision on it, it is difficult for me to make a comment on that. That is fair enough. Anyone else would like to make a comment on that particular issue? The issue of inspecting all the elements of this massive bridge is a complicated one, and there are techniques that can be used to inspect the structure of the bridge, ultrasonics and X-rays and things like that. However, those machines are quite enormous, and to get into the little crux and crannies of the bridge would be very difficult. I suspect that the way that the pin seized was invisible to a visual inspection, so the only alternative would have been for a machine inspection of every element of the bridge, which would be impractical in my view. I will come back to that particular point. Could I ask about inspections of the bridge? We were informed that this area of the trust end link was previously inspected in May 2015. Can you explain how FETA assessed the need for inspections? How often this part of the structure was inspected and how it was inspected? One of the requirements that is set out by the Department of Transport and adopted by the overseeing authorities in the UK is to have highway structures, including bridges, inspected on a two-yearly and a six-yearly programme. There is a general inspection every two years, which is a fairly routine inspection and then a more exact inspection every six years, which involves a close visual inspection of every inspectable part of the structure. That is what is required for authorities in the UK to inspect all their highway structures. Chris and I had been looking at this on 4th for a long while and we felt that this was not particularly suitable for such a large structure, so we developed a risk-based inspection regime based on how critical each component was or family of components and how vulnerable each of those was to failure. We felt that this was a better way of both focusing resources and also ensuring that the most critical and vulnerable elements were inspected. We identified each component of the bridge or each family of components and determined how vulnerable they were to damage, whether it is accidental, deliberate or terrorist damage, and we also looked at how critical each of those elements were to the structure. Combining those two pieces of information, we managed to come up with a risk-based inspection frequency whereby some elements would be inspected more frequently than others and that enabled us to use our resources, which are always scarce to inspect the most vital parts of the structure. As a result, we inspected a critical component such as the trust end links every six months. My recollection is that we did indeed carry out an inspection in May and we had been carrying out regular inspections at that frequency on the trust end links and we did not detect any issues with the links during that inspection. Obviously, the links were uppermost in our mind because we carried out significant amounts of analysis and work on those particular elements over the years. Therefore, they were inspected. We knew that those would be a critical component and, as it turned out, they were when we did our risk analysis. That was the basis of our—it is not too common. It is a fairly unique thing but we felt that it was the way forward for such large structures. However, it is not what the guidelines are—the guidelines from issued by department transport and followed by most of the overseeing departments in UK are two-yearly and six-yearly. Our inspection was more onerous than that. You went over and above the guidance in terms of identifying that this is a potentially important area that you need to keep an eye on. Of course, there were others that were equally important and we were doing something similar. Can I ask if anyone was aware of the problems with the pins and was any special method of inspection adopted to check whether the pins were rotating correctly? I think that it is fair to say that we were always aware of the issue that the trust end link is a particularly different part of, say, the structure than just a normal member. It is a moving part. The pins were always a concern not just for myself but for my predecessors, so that is why they were considered to be a critical component. One of the issues that we did know was that there was no sign of excess wear on the pin, there was no sign of movement that had been picked up in similar details on other bridges. We did not see an excess wear on the bushes around the pin. There was nothing to say that the pin was not performing and there was nothing in the inspection to say that there were any outward signs of distress on the adjacent members. We did have issues in the past where we had erected scaffolding down at that part of the structure and the scaffolding had been destroyed simply because of the movement of the deck. We were aware of the make-up of the pins and we were aware that it was not a particularly good detail, a detail where you cannot easily inspect and you cannot easily lubricate something like a pin is not considered a good detail. I think that those things were part of our thinking when we were looking to replace the whole element, the whole truss end links, back in 2010-11. At that time, you did not regard the pin as being a critical element in terms of the overall profile of the issues that you were having with the truss end links. Once what we were looking at, we carried out an analysis to determine where the most highly stressed part of the whole truss end link was and we were focusing on the weakest part, which was the connection to the tower. That connection was severely overstressed according to the analysis and that was a significant concern for us that that tower cantilever bracket under fairly light traffic loading, the analysis that is showing may rip off the tower itself, so that was a major concern to us. The analysis did not show that there was an overstress down at the pin level. Do you think that the analytical techniques need to be better in terms of your ability to assess what is happening with the pins? It is one of those difficult things because engineering is not science. Engineering is a mixture of science and art and it is a judgment. We have the most powerful analytical tools that we use and the consulting engineers who analysed the stresses in the members. We also had an independent checker who carried out an analysis. Those are the best firms in the UK and the world who are analysing and checking this using the best tools, but it is engineering. Engineering is always about judgment rather than an exact science. There may be that you can draw on the experience of others and other bridges elsewhere. Obviously, you are based in America now. I understand Mr Colford and there are lots of suspension bridges over there. Has there been any evidence of problems with pins in those bridges? We, as FETA, were keen to promote FETA. We are a member of the International Cable Supported Bridge Operators Association. It is quite an accident, but we were keen and the board supported my views on this to be part of this international community, which involves members from Golden Gate to Japan, China and other places in Europe. I was a European member for that organisation when I was with FETA. One of the things that it did bring was experience from elsewhere. We were aware that Humber was suffering from an issue with their end connection. That end connection does the same job as our truss end links with Humber Deck, but it is a completely different structural forum. One of the things they had in theirs is an A-frame, but the wear in the pin was already apparent. You could say that failure had already occurred, but because of the nature, it is in compression rather than tension. They have replaced their A-frame detail, and we were aware of that, but they had the early warning of the wear and noise that accompanied that. There was no such indication at fourth. We had some evidence last week that suggested that perhaps the answer in future, if you like, would be structural health monitoring and understanding that there is new technology that can be used to check in this. Was that available to you or was that something that you considered using? We do have structural health monitoring on parts of the bridge, but we have acoustic monitoring to listen for wire breaks on the main cable. We have structural health monitoring on the dehumidification system. We have GPS or GNSS systems on the bridge to look for movement of the deck. Structural health monitoring is developing on large bridges. It has been installed on the New Queens Ferry crossing, a significant number of sensors. It has been installed in Qingma bridge in Hong Kong and others. My main concern with structural health monitoring is overload of data, and you really have to know what you are looking for. The problem is that it is very useful and it has been used a lot on existing bridges where a problem has materialised, and you need to track the progress of that problem. It is not so good for detecting problems that you are unaware of. The joint that we are talking about was supposed to be moving, and the other joints were allowing some flexibility. However, at the very close-up point, how much movement was there on that pin? For example, if you were to make a chalk mark across it, would you see any movement in that when the bridge was flexing? Chris and I have been out on the bridge often and seen the end moving. It does move. You can physically see it moving. However, can you see the pin rotating at all? That is probably not possible to do. What I was trying to get at there is that it is on close inspection, it would be a tiny almost imperceptible movement in the pin itself. There is movement. No, it is not imperceptible, but it is difficult to determine how it is functioning just by visually looking at it. It is difficult to get the access to do that. You probably have to stand back some distance and look at it to see it moving. The other thing that you said was that it was a difficult joint to lubricate, and I wanted to know just a little bit more about that joint. Was it operating basically steel on steel, or was there something between the two? Was there a soft metal ring? Yes, there is a bush between the pin and the steel at the cast part. What was that made of? Was it brass or something like that? I think that it is cast iron. It is usually made of phosphorus bronze or cast iron. What happens is that it is supposed to eventually wear down. That is what happened in Humber. For example, there was a wear problem. From what I can see, that may not have happened at forth, but I do not have the analysis. To determine that, you would have to take the pin out. Unfortunately, at forth, the pin is enclosed and you cannot get into it to either lubricate effectively or inspect. It is not a great detail. It is not one that, if you were doing it again, you would design it that way. I think that, as a layman, I learnt quite a bit of engineering in my time on the FETA board. We are talking about this bridge, which is a historic monument and a living structure. It is moving all the time. We are going out into the middle of the bridge one time with Barry to look at some element of it. While we sat in the vehicle we were in there, West Lothian was going up and down quite markedly. It is very much a live structure. That is the whole point of a suspension bridge. Obviously, it takes a lot of the tension out of the whole thing. We did have Barry's expertise and, as he said, he worked with his peer group around the world. The emphasis in my time on the board was on the problems with the cables, the wire breaks and so on. That was pioneering work that Barry and his team were doing on the bridge, which was then used elsewhere in the world. Other bridge operators said, oh dear, we'd better look at our cables. That was very much where a lot of the budget had to go and then the cable bolts. That is where a lot of the priorities went over the period then. We were, as Lesley said, dependent on Transport Scotland funding. Is there anything else on the technical aspects of the bridge and the structural health monitoring that you want to say at this stage? We are very much in danger of applying too much hindsight to the engineering and design standards of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the bridge was actually being designed and built. If it was built today, it wouldn't be built that way. I know that the new bridge has learned lessons as have many other bridges. Each new bridge, obviously, has learned from the previous one. Just to agree with the councillor wheeler on that point, the issue of the early design of the bridge is an important one. I recall Barry talking to one report and raising the issue of the design and the fact that the bridge was getting older. The particular issues around the truss end were something that we needed to investigate at some point overall. However, as I recall, we were coming to the end of our term as Feta board members. I recall asking Barry to make sure that, when the issue was handed over, it was not lost in the transfer of responsibility to Amy, my worry was that that and other jobs would not be passed on clearly to the new bridge. We will come on to the prioritisation of capital works in due course. Members have a range of questions that they want to ask, but I think that we will leave it there. Adam, do you have any further questions? No, I am. I am going to hand over to Claire. Thank you, convener. I have a supplementary question on the question that Adam was doing. Feta did scope the work for the truss end link replacement. Did the scope of that work include replacing the pins? Yes. Our works were looking at replacing the whole of the truss end link, the whole structure, perhaps even. One of the things that we were looking to do was to put it up above the deck. We looked at other bridges where they would have similar details, so yes, it did. Okay, that is very helpful. I would like to ask some questions about the indicative capital plan. Can you give us an indication of how the indicative capital plan was prepared each year and how were the cost estimates arrived at for each of the proposed capital plan projects? It is quite a challenging task because on those structures we are looking at doing things that are unique. Our comparators may be in New York, Hong Kong or San Francisco where costs are completely different. Chris and I had the difficult task of trying to determine what we would spend on priority projects over the next 20 years, based on what we knew now. That capital plan was brought to the board after we put it together based on what we felt was needed for Fauth Road Bridge. That was a capital plan of what we felt was needed to be carried out on the bridge over 20 years. It is quite a challenge to determine what resurfacing will cost in year 2018-19, but that was based on prioritising on needs of the structure as we could see looking ahead. What would happen is that the experts would come forward to the board and there are a number of reports that we circulated, for example the one that I mentioned on 16 December 2011 and the second-last board meeting of the authority before it was abolished, which is a capital plan and reserves update, which goes through the trust-end linkages, suspended span under debt gantries. We have the board minutes of 16 December 2011, which is appendix 3 that we circulated, which goes through the prioritisation of priority ranking of non-committed schemes. The board previously had agreed—maybe Phil might be able to answer because he was particularly at that time—that the normal process would be the discussions with Transport Scotland because after the tolls, etc., we had to then go to Transport Scotland in terms of grant funding. The indicative would be that we want to invest in the bridge and the maintenance of the bridge and the upkeep of the bridge in the future. That would be the indicative capital plan. The one on 2011 and 16 December came to the board because the indicative plan that the board previously decided on could not then be implemented because of the cut of 58 per cent. The other one that I am talking about convener is item 5, which is appendix 4, which is a capital plan and reserves update. I was very clear and I am sure that Ian Ball will back me up on that. I wanted to make sure that we pass all the information from FETTA to the new organisation, to AME and to Transport Scotland. That report has a detailed list of trust-end linkage and suspended span trust strengthening. It has a list of around about £80 million, if I remember correctly, of work that we believed that on-going should be invested in. It was an on-going position in terms of investment, and the board would take the expert advice and prioritise it. As I said in my opening remarks, the challenge was, over the last number of years, that we were not our own destiny, I suppose, in our own setting of our budget because we had to go to Transport Scotland for some of our funding. That is a specific question on that. You referred to the appendix 4, where the trust-end linkage work. Again, there is a reference there to strengthening the links will cost significantly less than full replacement, which is an estimated cost of £15 million. I am just wondering how definitive that figure is, because another FETTA board paper, from 21 February 2014, says that full replacement has an estimated cost of between £10 million and £15 million. Are you confident that £15 million was what it would cost to replace the entire trust-end linkage assembly at eight locations? That would be back to 2011. I do not know if you wanted to, or perhaps Phil might want to do as well. I know that it is familiar. I am trying to establish whether it is a robust figure of what the works would cost. Can you shed any light on that, Mr Colford? As I said earlier, what we were doing was putting indicative costs on a capital plan. Here are indicative costs of likely spending over the next 20 years. It is very difficult to determine those until you have got the contractor's cost in your hand. We were trying to look at what those things cost elsewhere, but there were not many places that we could go to. We were doing the best work that we could to make those estimates, whether it was £12 million or £15 million. Those were our best estimates at the point. I remember producing a figure with Chris of £15 million. We may have reduced it to between £10 million and £15 million, but it all depended on a contractor's programme, how much of the work could be done overnight and how much possession time. In all those things, the more disruption that you caused to users by closing carriages or lanes to allow the contractor's access, the cheaper the price goes down. Do you think that that £15 million figure might have been built in any slack into that figure? Yes, there would be some allowance for contingencies in it. The basic premise of working in those live structures is that the more access you allow the contractor, the cheaper the price, but, unfortunately, the more access you allow the contractor, the more the disruption there is to users, so it is a delicate balancing act. I think that that is a very reasonable point. Last week, when we had the technical experts in the indicative capital plan, it was described as a wish list for the engineers. Can you tell me what the status of the indicative capital plan was? Did you have one for every year of the operation of FETA and of the priorities each year? I understand that the trust link was sent up at number 5 in the latest risk assessment, but how far down the capital programme were you able to get in previous years? The capital programme, as I described earlier, was what we considered was needed to be done on 4th Road Bridge. It was not a wish list, it was what we considered was needed to be done. It was not what we wanted to do, it was what we felt was needed to be done. Obviously, finances come into that. Post-tolling, we were in a slightly anomalous position of FETA, had the governance of the bridge but the funding came from a third party. We had to deal with that, but the capital programme was what we felt was needed to be carried out. Prior to the spending review, we were carrying out a capital programme. Obviously, things changed after that and we had to reprioritise capital spending. Engineering is about managing risks. When we were looking at the schemes, Chris and I and the management team had to look at what schemes could we afford to carry out. We could not afford to carry out all of them in a capital plan simply because there was a spending review. We have to accept that we have to work within the monies that we are granted. We had to carry out prioritisation of projects. The important thing is the safety of users and the safety of staff. That is number one. The second is the long-term structural integrity of the bridge. The third is potential disruption to users. Those were the ethos that FETA used to manage and maintain Forth Road Bridge. We did as much as we could to minimise disruption to users. Lots of the work was carried out overnight, sometimes at higher financial cost and at weekends simply because that minimised disruption to users. However, the priority was the safety of our users and the safety of our staff and the long-term structural integrity of the bridge. Minimising disruption was also a priority, but the other two took precedence. It was on that basis that we were looking at what projects we would prioritise. As had been spoken about earlier, at that point, the main cable and the main cable anchorages and the cable band bolts were our priority. Those structures are very different from other bridges. A lot of the key elements, unfortunately, are above the heads of the very people who are using the bridge. Even carrying out an inspection on the main cable involves risk to the users. Our job was to minimise that risk. Unfortunately, we cannot eliminate the risk. To eliminate the risk would be to shut the bridge completely whilst we carry out our work, and that is not possible. Our whole ethos, and what Chris and I did at all times and the staff did, was about minimising risk. We used that philosophy when we tried to prioritise projects in post-dispending review. We brought that to the board. The main cable anchorages, if a failure occurred there, there is a catastrophic failure of the bridge. Therefore, those became a priority. If the truss end link failed, there would be what we would term an operational failure. The risk of someone being killed or seriously injured was lower than other risks, but, unfortunately, it would involve a lot of disruption. When we risk assessed the risk to projects where there was potential for structural damage or collapse or risk to life, priority was taken. That is how we came up with the risks. The difference between operational risk and structural risk is something that I am keen to emphasise. Risk is a very difficult field. We operate in it all the time. Everyone who manages and maintains these large structures operates in this field, but it is about recognising risk. Risk is not about the probability of occurrence. It is the combination of the probability that something will happen and the outcome of that event. That is the field that we were working in. That is what we used to get a list of projects to move ahead with. We knew that there was an issue with a lot of the projects there, but we had to prioritise them. The re-prioritisation that took place—obviously, that risk assessment—would have looked to public safety. Had that been a safety-critical project that needed to be funded, would you be confident that you would have approached Transport Scotland to get that funding? Had it been safety-critical? We had good relations with Transport Scotland following the funding that came from there. We had meetings with them. If I had gone to Transport Scotland and said that there was a problem, my professional integrity would ensure that I would have pressed that case. The decision to not go ahead with the full trust end replacements but to put in place a temporary fix that would be trialled, which was carried forward by Transport Scotland, you are confident that that was a reasonable decision-making to have made and to continue to carry out that test and further implement the child to pair. Were you addressing your concerns about what the risks were at the trust end link at that time? Once we had prioritised, we revisited the analysis on the trust end links. One of the difficulties in loading on those types of bridges is defining what traffic loading is, because traffic loading changes all the time. Traffic loading, unfortunately, depends on the mix of cars and lorries or trucks. It can dramatically increase if you have a nose-to-tail line of 40-ton trucks, which was the nightmare scenario. We looked again at the risk of that happening. The risk of three 40-ton lorries sitting nose-to-tail adjacent to the towers and stationery without cars between them to dilute the load. The risk of that was looked at. Because we have traffic control and because we have staff there at all times, we thought that the probability of that happening was quite low. Therefore, we were able to re-look at the stress levels in those elements and it made me more comfortable about the stress levels in the trust end links. In addition, the probability of that load occurring is dependent on time. If you were going to let this situation go for 50 years, that is different from five years. We knew that traffic would be taken off the bridge to put heavy traffic to go on to the new crossing. All those thoughts were in our minds when we were looking at the re-analysis. It gave all of us some comfort that the stress levels might reduce. As engineers, of course, we were always looking for something else, and we knew that in the past, before this weakness in the trust end links was identified, that over 200 tonne abnormal loads had crossed the bridge and we had inspected this weak weld detail and there was no problems with it. It actually had withstood a working trial, if you like, a test loading. In fact, I think that we had a 238 tonne transformer going across at one time in the past. We knew that those loads had gone without any ill effects, but again this is the whole nature of engineering. The analysis is telling us something that we know in real life, a real time, that an actual larger load had crossed the bridge without causing the weld to rip off the tower. That is fine. Councillor Hynes, do you want to come in on those points? No, I think that we need more filler, to be honest, because it was during this time, in terms of that 2011. I certainly endorse what we are hearing from Barry, that obviously we had the guidance and the prioritisation programme that he came forward as to what was doable within the budget. That is one of the basic things in politics, the art of the possible. You folk will know that as well. We had to work within that constraint. You were talking, Ms Adamson, about the difference between 10 and 15 million for doing that work. My recollection from conversations with Barry about costing for different big contracts on the bridge was that there were a very limited number of contractors who had the skills to be near the bridge. That meant that it was not all that competitive tendering process if there were only two or three firms that had the ability to come forward. That put pressure on the pricing as well. Certainly, from the time that the decision was made to build the new bridge, I got the impression that there was always a pressure on FETTA only to carry out the absolutely necessary essential work to nurse the bridge through until the new crossing was available. The work that I touched on before, the cable work and the work on the bolts and so on, were items 1 and 2 on the list, and they were our priorities. We noted that there were a lot of other things that should be seen to, but they just had to be pended for that time. Only that my recollection was that if an issue cropped up regarding the safety of the bridge, we were never refused any funding from Transport Scotland to go ahead with anything that was considered to be a vital safety issue. One in the wider spectrum could see that eventually the whole bridge would have to be replaced piecemeal by piecemeal a bit like the chap that has 10 broom handles and 15 brush heads. We wouldn't be left with the original bridge. Ultimately, whether now in 10 or 50 years most of the components of the bridge would have had to be replaced. As Councillor Wheeler said with the advent of the new bridge on the horizon, it meant that we had to be careful of priorities. However, I recall that Barry had been quizzed about the priorities on the truss end links. I got the impression that it was not an immediate priority. It was probably a design issue from way back that really needed to be looked at. I got the impression that we were talking about 10, maybe 15 years in the future. That's why I was concerned that information was passed on to Amy so that it was followed up and not lost in the transfer. Thank you very much. We may come back to that. My initial question is to Mr Colford. You worked for 19 years on the bridge, is that correct? How old is the bridge about 52 years? You've had, if I say so, exceptional experience and expertise on the bridge. Can I take you back to a couple of key issues? I think that it was 2010 that FETTA advertised for consultants for a contract to replace the truss end links remedial works. Was that correct? As far as I recollect, yes. Could you perhaps go through for the purposes of the committee? Why was that decision taken in 2010 to advertise for these consultants and to carry out a contract? Well, at that time we were proposing to replace the truss end links. We had carried out a feasibility study. I remember that we had a workshop with a consulting engineer who was advising us at the time with our staff because more often than not the best ideas come from the guys who were actually working out there. They were involved with a workshop. What would be the best way of replacing the elements and designing them and what future maintenance was a promotion of mine? We were down the road of putting the feasibility study together for replacing the truss end links. At the next stage, after having got together a feasibility study, we knew that the engineering was feasible. We could do it. The next stage is to advertise for an engineer to design the works. It's part of the procurement process. We have someone who helps us out with the initial feasibility and then we go to tender to bring in a consulting engineer to design the work. That was the stage that we were at at that point. Prior to that, it was the decision of the FETA board. Was this the unanimous decision of the FETA board to go ahead? As far as I remember, yes. I suppose that the key question for me is if the work had been carried out, and I understand that it was pulled back, but if the work had been carried out, might that have avoided the bridge closing last year? As an engineer, I don't really want to answer hypothetical questions, but all I can say is that we had intended at that point to replace the truss end links. Okay. Can you explain again to the committee why the contract was cancelled? As I understand it, you had advertised in the press for consultants. You hadn't actually appointed them. It was ceased between advertising and appointment. Is that correct? Yes, yes. Okay. Why did that happen? Was this 100 per cent FETA's decision, or was it any other forces? FETA made the decision, but we make these decisions based on funding availability. What was the role of Transport Scotland's Scottish Government over your decision making? As I said earlier, FETA was in the position where we had the governance, but not the funding. That's quite a difficult position for any organisation to be in. It was our responsibility to manage and maintain Forth Road Bridge, but we had to rely on funding from Scottish Government via Transport Scotland. However, our relations were good with Transport Scotland. We prepared the capital programme, the board approved the capital programme or plan, and then we had to ensure that we got the money for that capital programme or plan. That involved negotiation and discussion with Transport Scotland. Did Transport Scotland pull the plug in the funding for this project? The funding came from Transport Scotland and Scottish Government. The answer to the question is self-evident. That's what they did. We didn't have the funding, we had a spending review and we had to reprioritise our projects. That was one of the decisions that we had to make. We made the decision, but the decision was made because of the spending review. Last week, and I'm sure that you've read the official record, and some of my colleagues have already used the quote. Transport Scotland had a light touch on the organisation with you. Secondly, your capital programme was a wish list. How would you respond to those comments from last week? I've tried to say that, from our point of view, Chris and I determined a capital plan and programme based on… We used risk in that process as well. It's quite a complex thing. If you do one thing, how does that affect another element in a bridge? If you replace one part, how does it affect future and access and spend? We used risk techniques to determine the priority of projects and the order in which we would do them, but it wasn't a list, it was a capital plan of what was needed on 4th Road Bridge in our professional judgment. I'm sorry, I didn't answer the other question, because I've forgotten what it was. The other issue was about it being a light touch. If you haven't forgotten the question, perhaps you could repeat it. Yes, I'm just going to do it, convener. The other issue was that Transport Scotland had a light touch, the implication being that you made all the decisions and they were just in the background. It sounds a terribly political question that I can only tell you what my experience of working we had close relations with Transport Scotland. We were engineers who had experience of bridges, who attended the meetings, understood the issues and the problems, and we understood from our side the funding issues as well. It was a realistic relationship. They had funding pressures, of course. Of course they did. We were in a situation before that the moneys were ring-fenced for funding the bridge. We were now in a different place and we had to be realistic about that. Our relationships are good. I don't recognise any of those terms as light touch or whatever. All I recognise is that we had a job to do as engineers. We would put forward what we felt was needed to be done and then we had a discussion with Transport Scotland on that issue. It's fair to describe your environment as pre-tolls and post-tolls. Pre-tolls, the bulk of the income—I think that the council lines mentioned that it's £12 million—would have gone by and large towards maintenance. In addition, you could borrow as well, and that could also go on. Post-tolls, you were reliant on funding from Transport Scotland. Well, when we had tolls in 4th Road Bridge, FETTA was formed in 2002 with the view to funding projects that might decrease congestion or increase public transport usage across the 4th Road Bridge. FETTA spent about £17 million on other projects, ferry toll, park and ride contribution, roads and recife, the approach to 4th Road Bridge, the A-1000, FETTA spent some of the toll money on that. Prior to 2002, all the money was spent in the maintenance and operation of the bridge, but even post-2002 up to abolition, the majority of the toll money was spent on maintaining the bridge. Post-2008, we were in a different era. The management and maintenance of the bridge had to compete obviously with other transportation projects, which were competing with other public-funded projects, so it was a completely different era. So it was more difficult to control your destiny? I wasn't in control of the funding of my destiny after 2008, so yes, it was more difficult. The other point that I was going to raise then, obviously, you didn't go ahead with the project. Was there any prospects of you borrowing to carry out the project under your own steam? We looked at borrowing and, as far as I remember it, FETTA would have been able to borrow, but speaking to our Treasury people who advised us from the city of Edinburgh, it wasn't a practical proposition to do, especially as FETTA was going to be wound up when the new crossing opened. I did speak to the finance people yesterday in the council who were responsible for the finance and supporting FETTA. They said that they still had the borrowing, that they could still borrow the same, that they still had that, but, in fact, the discussions, as I understand, that they had with Transport Scotland were not keen for that to happen, so they could have borrowed the money to be able to invest. That was directly, I had the conversation yesterday, but Transport Scotland was not keen on that suggestion of borrowing money. Would you have been happy to lend to an organisation that didn't have a revenue stream to fund the repayment? Revenue would have had to come from Transport Scotland, and that was the reasons why. Banks would have been a bit more concerned about the sort of collateral position. If I can just quote from page 7 of the FETTA papers in its point 3.10, I think that the key word here is operational capacity. As I said earlier, I came into our thinking when we were looking at prioritisation of projects post-spending review, September 2011. Yes, I do remember writing those words. I think that I said final, but final, final, convener. Can I just confirm, because I asked a question in finance last week, which Transport Scotland effectively denied. Was this the case? Can you just confirm this? September 2011, in the spending review, you had 58 per cent cuts in FETTA's capital programme. Was that correct or incorrect? Those were the figures that the Treasury officials in City of Edinburgh and Chris and I had sat down. I have seen a figure of 65 quoted by Audit Scotland, and I would have to say that I would bow to their superior knowledge. I am a mere engineer. 58 per cent was what we had calculated, but that was what I had reported to the board, as the figure reduced from our spending programme in 2011 in February to what we had after the spending review in September. I think that the official record that we showed from last week that, when I asked the same question, they said that they did not recognise that figure, but whether it is 58 or 65, it is still there. Can I just come back to the report, which was on 16 December 2011, review of capital projects? Transport Scotland would receive the draft reports and would have a discussion. I am aware of that because, while telling any secrets, there were times when they were not particularly happy with some of the wording in the last perhaps year or two years, and we would ask them to perhaps change some of the wording. I am aware that Transport Scotland were given draft reports and were aware of that. That is why I was quite surprised when I read that they did not want to be aware of it, considering the report. Normally, they would send someone to the board meeting as well. All of the documents, which are from 16 December 2011 and at the back, it says that the conclusion that the proposed three-year capital grant to FETA has been reduced by 58 per cent as a result of the review authorities' capital plan over the period has been carried out. That was following the funding review. If they had some concern about the 58 per cent or were not aware of it, they must have been aware of it. If they had some concern, they would have thought at the meeting or approached the convener or the bridgemaster to say that concern regarding that figure. That figure is in whack and white and was considered by the board and by the finance people or the experts who deal with the bridge at time day today. Perhaps I could ask some questions. Mr Colford is just a simple one for clarification. The issue with the trust and link member and the issue with the pin joint that we discussed earlier and that featured prominently in our evidence last week, do you believe that those could have been foreseen? I had obviously been thinking about that for quite some time and my answer to that would be no, I do not think that it could have been. We did carry out our inspections and I do not think that it was foreseeable. I do not think that the issue was foreseeable and I do not think that we spent a lot of time looking at the trust end links. We had a lot of consulting engineers assisting us looking at the trust end links and we did not foresee the issue with the pin sticking, if that is indeed what the mechanism for failure was. Thank you for that. It would be helpful to have that on the record. Because of your extensive expertise, as my colleague Mr Stewart has already referred to, forgive me if I direct most of my questions to you, although I do want to bring in our other panel members. As the former bridge master responsible for the fourth road bridge, we learnt last week that FETA had been looking at works to replace the trust end assembly since 2006. That was something that Mr Lees from Transport Scotland had said. In 2009, a preliminary preferred option was identified, which would have seen the entire trust end link assembly replace the eight locations at an estimated cost, which we discussed earlier between £10 million and £15 million. In 2011, FETA decided not to proceed with that option for reasons that we have alluded to. It decided instead to proceed with a trial of the strengthening work at one of the towers, which commenced in May 2015. I am sure that the public would be keen to know why, when the need for maintenance work was identified in 2006, it was a further nine years before that work was commenced. Can you perhaps explain the reasons for the delay and what the consequences of that decision to delay that work would have been? I can certainly go through the chronology of where we were in 2006. We identified the scheme to replace the links. The links are part of the suspended span trust, which is a huge piece of engineering. We were carrying out an analysis of that suspended span trust, an assessment of it. We had one firm of consulting engineers doing it and, as I said earlier, another firm independently checking it. It is quite an undertaking. In all of those things, they both carry out an analysis, run their computer models and finite element models, and they come up with answers after putting loads in. Then we spend time trying to get agreement between the answers. That took up an awful long time, but we finally did. We identified that significant elements of the trust were overstressed, including the links and the connection to the side towers. There are significant members within that trust who are overstressed, but getting down to the actual final agreement between the two sets of consulting engineers as to certify the analysis and the check took some time before we got agreement on that. In 2010-11, we identified that we needed to replace the trust end links. That was when they were put on the capital programme. What is the reason for the delay between 2011 and 2015? Since you have done all the preparatory work, you know what needs to be done, but there is still this further delay. What is the reason for that? The spending review meant that we had to prioritise, as we said, and we had a further look at the trust end links to look at the further detailed analysis of them, to see if there was anything else that we could do with live loading, traffic loading, to reduce the stresses within the members that we were most concerned about, which were the connection to the towers. Again, we had difficulties with the numbers and the analysis getting agreement between those, but we also had difficulties in how we were going to actually strengthen them. Is there anything that we could do to strengthen these weak elements without full replacement? That was what concentrated our minds between that period. One of the ironic issues that we were concerned about was that, when we were repairing the welding, we would get burned through in the paint and the towers. How we would repair that burn-through with the movement of the trust end links? How could we send our operatives down there when we knew that the scaffolding had been crushed and we knew that the trust end links was moving between the end of the trust and the tower? It was a matter of how we would get people down there, and that took a long time to try and determine. Was it very real, practical and logistical? Yes. The access into the towers is very difficult. How do we put welders in there if we could overweld on the existing welding? In addition, there was real concern about the quality of the steel within the towers. Steel in the towers at that period had a number of laminations in it and slag, and it sometimes has termed dirty steel. It is quite difficult to weld to. We had real concerns that we would be able to overweld on this detail, so we also had to carry out trials to determine whether we could overweld on the detail or not. All this took a considerable amount of time and effort, but we have also got to balance that with other things happening. Our main concerns at that time were the main cable, the main cable anchorages and the cable band bolts. Our concerns were the structural integrity of the bridge and, although we are not forgetting about the trust end links, we know in our prioritisation that a failure there is an operational failure, whereas failure in a main cable or cable anchorage is about the safety of the public and the long-term structural integrity of the bridge. If the main cable anchorages of the forth-road bridge fail or the main cable fails, there is a risk of life to the people who are using it. There is an obvious risk to the long-term future of the economy of the region, but there is also another risk that is sometimes thought about, which is that you may have a structure lying in the river and there are things going on in Rhesaith and the airport of Grangemouth. Those risks have to be thought about when you are looking at determining funding for those structures. There is clearly a lengthy delay, whether you consider that to be the nine years since 2006 or the four or five years since 2011, but you are saying that, through your management of risk, you are always prioritising any work that is safety critical, even though all the work that you have identified as needing to be done is ultimately the work that is the failure of which to undertake threatens the long-term structural integrity of the bridge. Would that be a fair assessment? No, only some of it does. Only some of the works. You have to divide it into an operational risk or a structural risk, but you can divide the timeline into two parts. What happens prior to September 2011 and what happens after that? That is helpful. The distinction between operational and safety critical, if you want to characterise it in that way, is helpful. We are trying to understand whether there are repairs that should have been done in timescales that are reasonable in terms of public safety or appropriate in terms of public safety and reasonable in terms of what would be considered good practice in the industry. You would argue that that was the approach that you took. Obviously, my view has to be some more colour because I was directly involved, but on looking back at it, I do not think that there was much more that we could have done within that period. As I said before 2011, we were concerned with the analysis of the trust at that point and the results of that. Once we had established that we had significant overstress on those connections between the trust end link cantilever brackets and the tower, we decided that we would put that in our capital plan to replace them. Subsequent to 2011, we had to make other decisions based on the prioritisation of those projects. We were then looking for a technical solution and an engineering solution to see whether we could possibly strengthen the links to help us out in that problem. That took quite a bit of effort and time because it is a unique problem and there were unique engineering and technical matters that had to be developed. You have to spend the time considering those before you cannot just rush in and do something in those respects. You have to spend time looking at the engineering and what is possible and what is not possible. Safety of the people who are doing the works is a parament as well. You have talked about engineering being about managing risk. You have talked about the need to minimise the risk to the staff and the public. Can I ask you a question that I asked our witnesses last week? In view of all of that and the benefit of hindsight, was the postponement of that larger piece of work, the replacement of the entire trust end link assembly at a cost of £10 million to £15 million? Was the decision to postpone that work and to look at a more cost effective trial? Was that decision reasonable? We had a range of responses to that question last week, ranging from reasonable and appropriate from the Transport Scotland witnesses. Amy suggested that FETTA made the right decision and that the area was not overstressed. Mr Hornby from Arup suggested that the correct assessment was made at that time. What would your view be, apart from any of those? All I can say is that FETTA's view was that we should replace the whole assembly. We did not have the funding to do that, so we had to look at an alternative. If we had strengthened as we thought there would be an option to do, the failure would have likely still occurred because it was not in the point where we were focusing our efforts to strengthen that. Perhaps I could put the question in a slightly different way. This is also a question that I posed to Transport Scotland last week. Is your assessment of the evidence that no safety critical work was postponed or not undertaken because of the budgetary constraints that you were operating within? I go back. I do not mean to be not answering a question directly, but safety critical is not quite a term that I would recognise. You have to look at risk and determine whether that risk is a risk to life, a risk to the structural integrity, a long-term structure integrity of the bridge or is it an operational risk? Which was it then in terms of that? Operational. The risk to failure of the trust end links was operational. The main risk would have been disruption to users. We knew that a potential for a step would develop at the joint. That may have caused an accident for a user at the time, but the main risk was in disruption. There was not a threat to the structural integrity of the bridge and there was not a threat to the safety of the majority of the users of the bridge. That is how we have to look at these things. I think that that is very clear and helpful. I am not quite sure that I have answered your question. I think that you have. Obviously, the official record will reveal whether you have or not. Mr Wheeler. Thank you convener. Just a comment on that. Obviously, you have quoted from the evidence that you heard last week that all the different experts were saying that it was the correct decision. That was the guidance that we had at the board. We had no reason to overrule that guidance or to change it. We had to go along with what the experts and our bridge master told us. That is why the board made that decision. I am pretty sure that it was unanimous. The board was normally pretty solid in its support of the management, but we did ask a lot of critical questions from time to time. Ian Chisholm being a particular questioner. I am sure that we were satisfied with the technical answers that we were getting. Can I ask Councillor Hynes? You have already talked about the cut to the capital budget. Earlier you said that it was in black and white that there had been a cut to the capital budget. That was something that had a direct bearing on the decisions that you took at the FETA board. Is that right? That is correct, yes. The decision that was taken by FETA was not to proceed with that larger piece of work, which was estimated to cost between £10 million and £15 million. If maintenance work had been identified by the experts as being necessary, why did you, as a predecessor, not make the case to the FETA board and to Transport Scotland for the funds to be committed to undertake that work? There was a spending review that we put forward at the time. We had an indicative capital plan, which included the trust end links and the total replacement of the trust end links, and that was the plan that FETA and the board wished to do. Now, if you are suggesting that we challenge a spending review, that may well be more filled than myself. Obviously, the bridge master would be challenging in trying to put forward the view for more resources. That was an indicative budget that he believed, professionally, was the money that we needed in order to invest in the bridge to ensure that we kept the bridge open and the maintenance of the bridge. That is helpful. I understand that. The essential thing, convener, is to keep the bridge going as best it could until the new bridge came on stream and, hopefully, nothing would go wrong with the existing bridge. That is definitely the message that we were getting. I should just add that there are a lot of other operational risks on that capital plan that we could not carry out. The surfacing of the bridge is only an inch and a quarter or 38 millimetres thick. There is a risk of debonding of that surfacing. If that happens, then we have to close a carriageway or close a lane. That is an operational risk. It does not threaten the structural integrity of the bridge. It does not threaten the safety of users, but it would cause massive disruption. The trust end links were not the only capital project that had to be deferred because of the spending review. There are lots of other projects with an operational risk but not a risk of structural integrity of the bridge. I could ask Councillor Hynes. We heard in evidence last week from Mr Lees of Transport Scotland who said that FETA could have used its reserves or come to Transport Scotland and asked for help. I have found no evidence of that, so I consider that the risk was deemed to be manageable. What is your response to that? Is that your view? Is that the correct assessment of the situation that FETA faced at that time? We had reserves that we needed. For example, one of the projects that came as an emergency, as I understand it, £5 million was needed for that project. We needed to use the reserves so that there would be a discussion between Transport Scotland and the bridgemaster on what we would use in reserves and what we would try to get from funding from Transport Scotland. That would be the discussion that we would have. However, the spending review was a decision by the Scottish Government in Transport Scotland of the money that it allocated to FETA. Therefore, FETA was the money that it had. FETA also used its reserves, but the advice that I gave to the finance officer yesterday from the council is that Transport Scotland would also be asking to make sure that we kept in reserves. That was one of the concerns that we had as a board regarding the last year. In fact, our reserves got down and down and down. The only reason that we may all be passing over around £3 million or £4 million is because of a court case that we are not allowed to discuss. However, there was funding that came from that, and that is the reason why. However, we were getting down to a situation of reserves in the last year that no other local authority or other public organisation would want to get those reserves down. In case there were some emergency, that is what you would keep the reserves for. However, there was a discussion between the bridgemaster, Transport Scotland and FETA, and the board discussed that about using the reports that you can look through. However, we used the reserves when we thought that it was appropriate in discussions, and we tried to get as much funding as we could from Transport Scotland as well. Okay, thank you very much. Can I ask the same question of the other board, the former convener and the board member, and then bring you back in, Mr Colford? So, being back to the Transport Scotland evidence from last week, FETA could have used its reserves or come to Transport Scotland and asked for help. What is your response to that? Yes, I am sure that that was theoretically possible, but we are told as a result of the spending review that we would have to make do with what we have got, unless there was a real emergency. That is definitely my recollection of the situation at that time. I do not think that we as a board would ever have wanted to reduce our reserves to a dangerous level, and I doubt if Audit Scotland would be happy with that either. We were always concerned, and it came up at board meetings quite a lot, that we wanted to hand over the bridge in good condition and as safely as possible to Amy, because we had taken pride, at least since I was on the board since 2007, of the way that we would run the bridge and maintain the bridge, despite many crises that were down to an ageing structure and an increasing load that it was never designed for. However, we felt that we had done a great job, and we wanted to hand over fully operational bridge to Amy. It is worthwhile noting that during our period, or my period, 2007, when FETA was disbanded, we never had a full closure of the bridge. We never closed the bridge completely. Lanes might have been closed at times, but I am pretty certain that we never closed the bridge. It was a real disappointment when it was fully closed, but it is worthwhile also pointing out the things that Barry was talking about—operational risks. Even with this— My question was about why FETA did not go back to Transport Scotland and make the case for the work to be done. In 2015, when we were near the end of our term, there were proposals to do a pilot welding to see whether that was going to be done. I think that we will leave it there. Mr Colford, do you want to come in? It is fair to say that the value of the reserves would not have covered the work that was needed to be done in the capital plan. However, my discussions with Transport Scotland recognised the risks. They were well aware of the approach that we were taking and supported us in our risk-based approach to prioritisation of projects. FETA officials in Transport Scotland recognised that the risk for the trust and links was an operational one. Therefore, the prioritisation was put forward to the board and approved, based on the fact that it was an operational risk. If I had gone to Transport Scotland and said— It is unacceptable to be clear that the postponement of this larger piece of work along with some other projects that had to be weighed in the balance, that was an operational risk and an acceptable risk. It depends if you find that the operational risk is acceptable or not. I am asking you. I prioritised risk. That does not mean that any risk is acceptable. Acceptance of risk is a very subjective thing. All that we did was prioritise risk based on those philosophies of safety of the public and staff, the long-term structural integrity of the bridge and disruption. In our priorities, disruption was lower than the first two. You would say that it was an operational risk but you would not go beyond that to say that it was acceptable or reasonable or the correct decision? I reported to the board on those matters and the board may have taken a political view or a view as the board whether those risks were acceptable or not. My job as an engineer is to present the risk and to show where the priorities were. The matter of whether a risk is acceptable or not is quite a subjective one. Does anyone else want to have a go at that? We will just repeat it, it is that replacing the trust-aid links and other projects we are in the indicative capital plan. As far as FETA board was concerned, as far as the bridgemaster and the management team was at these were works that needed to be carried out. Whether risk, medium, lower, whatever, high or whatever, they were the projects they believed needed to be carried out, the integrity of the bridge and for the maintenance of the bridge. A spending review then came along, which cut that funding and therefore they took the judgment and the priorities and that was reported. Yes, we could have gone back and I am sure the answer would have been no, and that would have been quite clear of that. Therefore, the replacing the trust-aid links was not seen a priority. If you look at the list, the priorities that were there were ones that were, as has been said already, the main cable acoustic monitoring, those kinds of ones that were seen at the time of actual real risk of the closure of the bridge. Thank you for that. Did you want to add anything, Mr Wheeler? To reiterate what I said before, the board was guided by all the different experts that it was not acceptable to postpone that work at that time. You heard that evidence last week and we endorse that today. The trust-aid link work was never put off if you want. It was a job that had to be done at some point. Coming to the end of our term, we wanted to make sure that that work was followed through, as I have said before. Given all the problems that we have of maintaining traffic flow between Edinburgh and Fife, we did have to have a political eye to the closure, or the major closure of any of the bridge lanes. Fokker track home from their work is very important to Fife. I hope that we can talk about the tolls and things later and the funding of the bridge, because it is an important issue, as well as the safety and the operational risks of the bridge. I thank you very much for moving on now. It is my understanding that the part of the trust-aid link that was thought to be critical and most in danger of failing was the bracket to the main tower. That was the work that has been taking forward. I think that you have explained the reason for technical challenges that had to be addressed and how that was done, but it resulted in a four or five-year period or so before the work could eventually be done. Am I correct on that? It was the bracket, not the pin, an associated member that recently failed that was thought to be the problem. Yes, you are correct. It was the bracket and the weld, especially the weld of the bracket to the back of the tower. It is not particularly good detail, I have to say. The bridge is a fantastic piece of engineering, but there are places where quite clearly not enough thought was given to what might happen in the future. That is a poor detail. As an engineer, when you look at it, you can see that it is a poor detail. We were particularly concerned about that weld. It was an intermittent weld. What we were doing when we carried out the trial to try and strengthen it was really a trial because we were not sure whether we could overweld on it, whether the steel underneath was good enough to take the overweld. As I understand it, the trial has been a success that was taken on or continued by Amy, but Chris and I were involved heavily in that. Even to get people in there was very difficult to get the welders in and the equipment and the ventilation, but it was the bracket and more especially the weld detail to the end. It was in danger of ripping off the tower. I suppose that the weakest link did not fail, but a stronger link failed. It could be described as ironic, but it did. You have talked a wee bit about your method of risk assessment, risk evaluation, and if my understanding is correct, that is a combination of the probability of failure and the severity of the consequences of failure if the failure occurred. You have a professional opinion, given all your experience, notwithstanding the fact that it took a number of years because of the technical challenges to address this bracket welding, that was reasonable under the circumstances that you were not so concerned about a few years delay because your risk assessment had indicated that this is not a desperately urgent problem, we can live with four or five years of delay. I am not suggesting otherwise, it seems to me that what you have been saying in a sense was that that was a reasonable position to take, given the probability and the consequences that go into risk assessment. As I said earlier, there are a couple of things that gave us some comfort. One was that we knew that there had been very large loads crossed over the bridge in the past, which in theory should have caused an overstress so significant on those welds that they should have failed and they had not because it is engineering. We knew that. We also knew that the probability of the traffic loading pattern to cause the failure was low, the probability of occurrence was low, but the outcome was high, so the risk was high and we could control that probability of occurrence, so we had that comfort as well. That helped us in having some time to do it. It gave us a comfort of being able to find the right solution for it and it took some time to do that because there were a number of real technical challenges in carrying out a modification of a trial to that truss end link. It did not mean to say that we were laggard in it or that we set it to the side. It was one of the constant worries on the bridge, along with the cable anchorage use, the end of the truss, the truss members themselves, the main cable, the suspender. It is a lively old structure designed to take half the traffic loading that it takes now. It continually needed work and funding. Our whole job was to look at the issues but manage them based on probability and risk. My final question. You talked about the indicative capital programme and the difficulty of looking forward into the future and getting accurate costings there and so on. I absolutely accept that. That £15 million programme—I am just not clear absolutely—was that capital programme developed with the knowledge that the new bridge was going ahead or was it developed without that knowledge? That is a good question. At the time when we were developing our capital programme, we put feelers out to ask questions about what is happening in the future. I do remember clearly the result of that. We did not know what traffic would be using the new crossing and what traffic would be using the existing crossing. Therefore, we had to plan based on the traffic loading that was there on Forth Road bridge and might be there in the future. That was the basis of the planning for the capital plan. That was what we had at the time and what we went forward with. Mr Colford, you have just alluded to the new Queensferry crossing. Can I ask you to capture that for the record? What bearing, if any, did the proposal to proceed with the new Queensferry crossing have on the risk assessment exercise and the prioritisation of capital schemes following the reduction in the capital grant? It did affect some of our thinking for programming, because post 211—I cannot quite say what date—we did know that it was unlikely that heavy goods vehicles would be using the existing crossing and the existing Forth Road bridge. That allowed us to reduce the return period, as we call it, for loading. What is the probability of this certain convoy of heavy goods vehicles sitting adjacent to the tower and producing this maximum load that would cause the overstress? If you are assuming that there are 100 years that the probability of that might occur in 100 years, the probability changes if you have only got five years. It does not change very much, actually. It does not allow you much of a reduction, but it does give you something. That was something else that we could put in our considerations for analysing the trust end links. The fact that the existing bridge had a limited lifespan at its current capacity was a factor in determining the decisions about managing risk and prioritising. A limited lifespan, as far as the traffic loading was concerned, I would not like to use the words limited lifespan for the bridge, but a lifespan at a limited traffic loading. I also say that that was a discussion that we had as well, because there are quite a number of issues that were not sorted out—I do not know whether they still are—about what would be able to use the old bridges. You will know that there was a proposal for the original crossing when it was called the Queen's Ferry crossing about how many lanes it was and what traffic it would take and how would the old bridge be used. I remember the discussion that there was not a clear direction. There are also issues about taxis and farm use from vehicles and so on, and I think that that has only just been clarified if it has been clarified and kept up to date, because it is not responsible. We were well aware that we were not clear exactly for quite a long time of what the existing bridge would be used for in the future. We might have influenced, but I do not think that we would not have known that. I remember the discussion that we were not clear exactly what the use of the existing bridge would be once a new bridge was open, because those decisions took some time to take. Once it was decided to build the new bridge as to quite what the demarcation of traffic between the two bridges would be, and eventually it seemed to be crystallising, although we are hearing that it did not finally crystallise to fairly recently, but it seemed to be going in the direction that most traffic would go on the new bridge, and only a limited amount of traffic would use the existing bridge. Therefore, the existing bridge would not need so much heavy work done to it or major work, because it would be able to cope with a lighter load, as Barry was saying. If there is no 40 ton lorry that is going over the new bridge, it would not be taking the same impact as before. Alex Johnson has been waiting patiently to ask his questions. Thank you very much. I have some finishing off questions, but I also have a question that relates to what we have just been discussing. I hear what has been said, but there is still something that I do not understand about the funding loops that are going on here. Transport Scotland believes that they were setting the budget to fit the priorities. We have heard from you today that you believe that you were setting the priorities to fit the budget. It is almost as if you were both sitting there in the front seat of the car, each believing that the other was driving. Who was driving? If you take it that who was setting the budget, pre-tolls, when they were there, then it was totally fetters responsibility in terms of income, in terms of borrowing and setting the budget, and the governance was our responsibility in decision making. The indicative capital budget, which we have discussed before, is worth repeating, was put forward as an investment in the bridge. Those were the priorities for the Feta board and for the bridgemaster in terms of going forward. That is the way that we believed that we were working with Transport Scotland. A spending review came forward and then cut what we expected the funding to be. Therefore, we had to then fit the priorities with the budget that we had. Whether they believed that, but that is the reality of it. It is in a report, it is round and black and white and Transport Scotland is aware of that. They were our priorities. That is the indicative budget that we wanted to invest in the bridge over the coming years from 2012-13 onwards. We had reserves, etc. We could use as well. However, that spending review happened and we got less money than we were expecting. Therefore, we then had to set the priorities. Some of the projects, including replacing the trust end links, we could not then afford because we did not have the money and we could not borrow because we did not have the tools. We could not borrow, but we could not pay it back because we had to get money from Transport Scotland. As I understand it, my understanding is that we set the priorities, taking all the risk into account, with the budget that was set by Transport Scotland. Are you confident that you were not in control of the pace at which your priorities were addressed? I agree. As soon as the tools were removed, the bridge was dependent on Transport Scotland's checkbook. To continue your analogy, if I can, it was like a car with dual controls. That is the way it was. It was complicated for us to work within that structure. There have always been problems because, if the total funding had come from bridge tools, folk in Fife were getting increasingly upset about the possibility of huge increases that were booted at that time. The funding had to come from somewhere. Given the age and structure and the increase in loads in the bridge, that bill was always going to be higher and higher and higher. Consequently, if Transport Scotland and the Government had not been funding the bridge, then the motorist would be looking at maybe five or ten pounds of tolls. I do not think that that was politically acceptable to the folk of Fife. That is maybe the answer to the question that I still had in my mind. To be fair, that is the decision that was taken by the Scottish Government. Perhaps the long-term investment on who was going to pay for that was not thought through. That would be my view. Was it thought through? You took the tolls off to where there was a demand from some of the public. You took the tolls off to where that income then was not coming in in order to then be invested. You took the money and had to come from somewhere, and you had to come from the Scottish Government and from Transport Scotland, or from some of our reserves, because that was the only alternative that we had. And tolls coming off the bridge were widely supported in Fife. I do not think that the Government had really thought through all the implications of taking the tolls off. We had a meeting with the then Transport Minister, Stuart Stevenson, when he eventually came to meet the FETA board to discuss the removal of tolls and all that meant. We had to invite him to come. He did not offer to come, in fact. Obviously, a number of the questions that we raised, he had not got answers to. One in particular that I recall asking was if we are no longer needing to collect tolls, we no longer need people to collect the tolls. Fair enough, some of them could be redeployed, but a fair number of them would end up being redundant. What was going to happen to the redundancy payments? Who was going to fund them? Obviously, the Government had not thought of that. The minister and his adviser beside him looked in horror when that question was raised. I think that there is just an indication of how much of a rushed job it was taking the tolls off rather than having thought through the whole implication. As it happened, the minister had to agree to stand behind the board to pick up the tab for the redundancies, which were an unquantifiable figure at that point, but that was just one indication that I can give of the lack of thought that went into the process at that stage. I said that I had some finishing off questions and I will move on to those. The first one is that we have spoken about this problem as one that could or could not have been foreseen. Are there any other parts of the bridge that we should be concerned about, either because of the condition or because of the level of stress that they are able to expose to? There is a list, if you want, on Appendix 4, which was on 20 February 2015, which is the second last meeting of FETTA. As I said, I was very clear in my opening remarks that there were two issues with staffing, retention of staffing of our expertise, but also ensuring that we handed over the bridge with all the information. There is a list of around £80 million at the time, which is saying that, in order for the bridge to still keep open and to invest and put in maintenance, then those are the projects that Amy and Transport Scotland need to consider. It would be fair to ask that question of the people who are responsible, who are Amy and Transport Scotland. We certainly set down post May 2015 what we felt the requirements—sorry, pre-2015 May 2015—what the requirements we felt were needed to carry out a capital programme on the fourth road bridge. They are there in the public domain that can be seen, but I think that that question should best be answered by the contractor and for Transport Scotland. With hindsight, people always say that, but at the time, I remember very clearly saying as a board, we need to make sure that we handle all the information because we do not want to get the blame that we have not handed over everything, that we have not done everything by the book, and that we have a good organisation that has run well and has handed it over. I hate to say that I had that feeling that something might happen, but six months in after Feth is abolished, we have got that problem. I am so pleased that all the information that we handed over to Amy was there, but what has happened after that in terms of June, we do not know, because it is not a public body that has its documents etc in the public domain. I presume that, as there would be with a thing like the bridge, there would be a list of issues that you would have been aware of and were planning for in the longer term. It had to be an on-going thing. All the time I was on the board, we had the list of work in progress or work to be done, and, as you have heard before, it worked on a risk-based basis of how we allocated that work or we agreed to it. Obviously, that continued right up to the last day of Feth. We were told at the last meeting of the committee that the new Queensferry crossing will be subject to continuous structural health monitoring in a system that is being applied there. Is that something that should be considered for the fourth road bridge in future? I would have to say that that would be a decision for Amy in Transport Scotland. I can only say that we did install a number of pieces of structural health monitoring on the bridge, but, as I said earlier, structural health monitoring is very useful. Mainly, if you have an indication of a problem, it is like health monitoring in general. If you think about heart monitoring, would you put a heart monitoring in the whole of the population and hope that you will spot those who may have a problem later on? That is the kind of thing that we were looking at at the fourth road bridge. There are thousands of individual members. Which one do you monitor? Mainly monitoring has been done to date on issues or problems on existing structures. There is a problem. You put a monitor on and monitor that problem for a limited period of time until you see the progress of the problem. Monitoring whole structures has not been done that often—whole big structures—over a significant period of time. Queensferry crossing is one. Qingma has been done. There have been issues with data collection, whether we are collecting the right amount of information. If you spend money on those things, the money is going from doing other things because we all have a limited pot of money. You have to look at it again on a prioritisation basis. Structural health monitoring certainly has a place in the industry, but it is still a developing place in the industry. That begs the question, Mr Cole, for the few who are recommending replacement of trust-end links at a significant cost of £15 million. Surely that would point to the need to have structural health monitoring of the trust-end links. Why did you not consider that? The weakest part that we had identified was the welds in the trust-end links, and we were carrying out close inspection of those welds of the trust-end links. The trust-end links are a part of the bridge where components of the bridge need to be replaced before the life of the structure itself. The trust-end links are part of the family of components. That is why we were reaching 50 years old, and we felt that they had to be replaced. You also pointed out that it was extremely difficult to inspect the pins. Given that it was extremely difficult to inspect the pins, would that not also identify a need for structural health monitoring of the pins? At the time, we did not think or feel that there were any issues with the pins. You had already pointed out in an earlier question to me that there were issues with the pins in the Humber bridge. I assume that there are issues with pins and other suspension bridges across the world. Surely that should have flagged up the need to investigate the issue? The pins at Humber displayed signs of wear and signs of distress, so they were replaced. I am not sure that there was much permanent monitoring done at Humber. We were aware that we could not inspect the pin and we could not grease the pin, but we carried out an inspection of the areas adjacent to the pin. The pin itself, as I understand it, has not failed. It is the members adjacent to it that have failed, as I understand it, although I say that I have not been involved in the analysis. The particular point about structural health monitoring was clearly that we cannot put something like that across every part of the bridge. Surely it should be in those parts of the bridge that you have concerns with that might alter your prioritisation for capital programmes. I am just wondering why that was not done here. You have to look at the risk and what is involved in the risk and whether you should spend money and time and resources looking at that particular member or another member. The risk priority was members who might cause structural collapse. That was not one of them. The failure of that particular member would have caused an operational issue, not a collapse issue. However, a hindsight would have helped to determine the possibility of something being done sooner if you had had that structural health monitoring in order to identify the problem. With the benefit of hindsight, I could not remember the second part. If the structural health monitoring had been in place that would flag up, there was an issue with the pin that needed to be... Possibly, yes. You have to say that that would not have been a cheap option. No, it would have been a difficult thing to do and I assumed that it would be an expensive option as well. I could also say as well as the kind of monitoring, etc. One of the reasons why we wanted to have the bridge master and the senior team in place is because of their experience and they knew the bridge like the back of their hand, I would say, and they had that expertise. While we might look at monitoring, they knew that bridge and that is one of the reasons why, as a fet of board, we were very keen to keep the bridge master and the senior team in place to make sure when we handed that over. They had that expertise and that knowledge and experience of the bridge, and I think that that is pretty crucial as well. Thank you for that, Alex. I was going to finish off with a comment and a question about the antithesis of structural health monitoring, which is why it has been done. Speaking to the minister who had been advised by his engineers, he told me early in this process that if the trust end links work had been done, this problem would have been avoided, but that would have been a by-product, it would have been a bit of a lucky break that the work would have been done without it previously having been discovered. Is that not to an extent to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of maintenance of old machinery in that invariably when you take things apart and put them back together again, you discover things that you didn't know were there, you replace parts as you go along, and that failure to deal with these issues is in fact a risk factor in being caught out in the way that we were? Well, that's difficult to answer. It wasn't meant to be an easy question. I'm not actually quite sure what the question was. It sounded more of a statement than a question, but we had identified a need to replace the trust end links. There was a feeling not just because the trust end links were showing to be... It was a serious issue that we felt at the time on the overstress of the... We first discovered the overstress and the welding, but we looked at it from an engineering point of view, but they were getting on 50 years old. It was one element of the bridge that we considered for replacement and put it in our capital programme for replacement. That was an absolute decision in 2011 or 2010 to put it in the capital programme for replacement, but it was one of a number of issues on the bridge that had to be dealt with. It was a number... There were a number of issues. Our focus at that time was on the main cable anchorages and the main cable because... Having been removed from it from five years, it's difficult to remember how intense that period was for dealing with the main cable and main cable anchorages. We really had concerns over the main cable anchorages at the time and the main cable. Can I just add a wee bit from my own experience, life experience? Preventive maintenance often causes more problems than it solves, or it purports to solve if you take your car into the garage. There are many times that it comes back with more problems than it went in, and it's the same... Plaint on your mechanical? Well, it does. It's a difference in philosophy, and a lot of people say that you should just not go into a preventive maintenance thing. On the sensors problem, if I can, I mean, I don't know any sensor that would monitor the season up of that bearing and the trust end links. I mean, how could that be done? It's not... Visual inspection would maybe show it up, but it's very, very difficult. Like I said right at the very beginning, you could do it through ultrasonics or x-ray technology, but that would be very difficult in practical terms to have a permanent monitoring of these components, and as Barry has said, which components do you decide on this very complex structure? A structure which I might add is really like a ship rather than a road bridge. It's in a marine environment, and it's got all the problems of marine environments with salt water ingress and things like that. They all impact, and it probably is a factor in the bearing seizing up. It's not an easy thing to look after the bridge, and we've kept it going. She's getting to be an elderly lady. There will have to be funding supply there for the next fifty-hundred years, because it's a listed building, as far as I know. So somebody's got to commit to funding the bridge, despite it having a much lower loading in the future. It will still need to be looked after, because of the environment that it lives in. Do you have any further questions, Alex? Can I ask members of any final questions that they would like to ask? Mr Colford, earlier on you said that, had the trust end link project gone ahead, and I appreciate that it wasn't scoped and the full technical specification hadn't been done, you said that it would have resulted in considerable disruption. Could you give us an indication of what that disruption would have likely been and how long it would have lasted? At the time, what we knew as we put an engineering solution, we could do the work. We knew what we'd gone to the point where we knew it could be done. The next stage of that was advertising for a consulting engineer to design it, and then the consulting engineer would put together a design, and then we would get a contractor on board to carry out the work. It's at that point that the determination of disruption occurs. What we did know at that point was that there was likely to be some disruption to users. Now, as we know, even closing a lane in Forthwood Bridge for four hours causes significant disruption to users. Therefore, it would be difficult to say at that point during the feasibility study that we were at that there would be no disruption to users. However, it would only be when we got the contractor on board and got the contractor's method of working and how much, where would the balance be between closures of the carriageway and the cost of the works? The cheapest way of doing it would have been to shut the bridge and allow the contractor to get on with it, not able to do that. That's one extreme. The other way would be to try and minimise the number of closures that we would have done, but the cost then starts going up, because the contractor has to work at difficult hours. It's difficult to say what that would be because we hadn't reached that stage. That stage comes quite later, but we would have been telling people to expect disruption. I would say that my past experience on the bridge, when we resurfaced during the weekends on a carriageway, we would put out a huge publicity campaign to tell people to stay away, don't come, and it didn't work as well as we would like to have worked, because human nature is that people still come and expect that their neighbours aren't going to go, but they'll be okay. It's very difficult to do that. If we'd carried out the works themselves, they would have likely caused major disruption if they would have been planned and that disruption would have been advertised, but my experience is being that they would still have been disruption. Are there any further questions from members? No. Can I ask the witnesses if they have any final comments that they would like to make? I'm conscious, Mr Tracy, that you've not contributed to the whole... I'm consciously keeping quiet. It's okay, you should do that more minutes as well. Barry has covered most of the issues, as far as I'm concerned. A couple of things might be to reiterate is that the capital plan was based on our programme of inspections from structural assessments and from operational needs, and that was how we established the plan in the first place. I think that, going forward, the asset management, the work prioritisation, is something that the bridge managers, the asset managers in general, use every day throughout the UK, throughout the world for that matter, in that we go through and assess following inspections, following assessments and prioritising schemes. We have to prioritise them because there isn't a finite budget available to carry out all the work and all the assets throughout the country, so I don't think the process that we went through was any different than what happens on a day-to-day basis, as I say, throughout the country. I knew it was worth having you here for that contribution. Thank you very much. Do witnesses have any final comments that they would like to make to place on the record? To me, it's actually made me more focused as well in terms of what's been quite interesting in the discussion and the questions. Stephen Flaty will get you everywhere as well, and the questions have been very detailed, but I genuinely think that the opening statements about the three decisions that were taken out with FETA and the board and the professionalism that we had, and FETA's reputation to me is really important going forward. I hope that we have given evidence today that has proven that as a board. I think that the only time that we actually ever had a vote when I was the convener was when we wanted to put a certain flag on the top of the bridge if I remember and there was a vote for that. That wasn't the Skull and Crossbones, was it? I think that you know what it probably would be. We tried to operate on the committee on the basis of consensus as well. I think that hopefully what we've done today has proven with the questions that you've given and the answers that we've given that FETA, the board and the professional body put forward and left the bridge in a good condition in terms of the situation, the spending it had. Thank you very much. It only remains for me to thank all of our witnesses for their attendance this morning and for their openness and willingness to engage in such a constructive way with the committee. We also appreciate not just your attendance but the detailed documentation that you have forwarded to the committee that has been invaluable in our deliberations. Thank you once again and thank you Mr Colford. We recognise that your commute today has been slightly longer than that for the rest of us. So we now move this meeting into private session. Thank you.