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It's an ol' boys game! Throwing money from the public purse, to anyone and everyone, they know!
The decision to build two CalMac ferries at the Ferguson shipyard in Port Glasgow has led to years of controversy.
A Scottish parliamentary inquiry called it a 'catastrophic failure of management'
In 2015 a businessman (James Allan McColl OBE) with links to SNP ministers (Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond) rescued the failing Ferguson’s yard from bankruptcy and a year later secured the contract for the ferries.
At the time there were concerns that Ferguson Marine had not built any ferries of this size in the recent past. A new management team had recently been installed, and they too had no experience of building a ferry of this size. The finances of Ferguson Marine were so tight that they told the Scottish Government they could not provide the financial guarantees that were stipulated in the contract.
CMAL reported that Ferguson Marine failed to provide a detailed plan for building the ferries, failed to assign the correct workforce resources, quality issues were becoming apparent, and that there was lack of space at the shipyard.
A BBC Disclosure documentary has shed new light on the saga. Here are 10 key things that they learned during their investigation.
1: Jim McColl was already looking at buying the yard before it went into administration
2: CalMac's specification was based on a ship designed for a Swedish route
3: Ferguson was allowed onto the shortlist despite not meeting a mandatory requirement
4: Assessors knew whose bids they were scoring
5: A key document gave Ferguson an advantage
6: CalMac's experts thought a rival bid was better
7: Ferguson's design changed significantly after the submission deadline
8: Ferguson's initial price was £37m higher than the cheapest bid
9: CMAL and CalMac were often at loggerheads over the design
10: Workers had no confidence in 'turnaround director' Tim Hair, he had been paid almost £1.3m for 454 days work.
The Glen Sannox Ferry was supposed to have been in service May '23, it is now estimated to be in service December '23.
I doubt it very much!
All the info reported here is available from the public domain and is not hereby claimed as my own.
Taken from multiple sites online. including:
heraldscotland.com
bbc.co.uk
wikipedia.org