Site Works

by Robert Davidson

  Allan brought two seats across along with two more coffees.

  James Swann seated looked at the documents spread across Allan’s desk.

  ‘I had hoped this would be simple,’ he said.

  ‘When it comes down to it the contract is simple, James. For you and me it’s no more than our promise to do our best and take our shilling and move on. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Sure, but we’re here to discuss less abstract matters, meaning the Final Valuation.’

  ‘That includes your claim for additional costs at the A9 road crossing, a variation that amounted to a whole lot of money.’

  ‘There’s nothing unusual in varying the contract.’

  Allan sat on the desk’s third chair and put down a writing pad.

  ‘Yes, do take notes’, said GR. ‘But don’t start yet.’

  Allan put his pen on the pad and waited. GR put his hand on the Standard Specification.

  ‘We vary from the Standard Spec here and there of course and that is why we have the job spec.’

  ‘And you allow us to suggest further variations as we go, such as discarding the brick chamber and using large diameter concrete rings. That made a considerable saving that we’ve put against the additional expense of the tunnel we had to build.’

  ‘Had to build? There was no ‘‘had to’’ about it.’

  GR’s eyes were suddenly ablaze with judgement, holding the moment, delaying James Swann’s reply by force of will. When his defence was eventually articulated it sounded almost like an admission.

  ‘This Ness and Struie Contract didn’t give either express instruction to go down through the road surface or any mechanisms of description, specification or measurement.’

  ‘We made a mistake when we omitted those items; yes.’

  ‘And we had no duty to bring them to your attention.’

  GR nodded to himself, a weary gesture of resignation and hurt.

  ‘Technically your case was won before you walked in.’ GR turned to Allan. ‘I take it you’ve agreed all matters of fact with Trevor, quantities, time spent on additional works?’

  ‘Yes.’

  GR looked back at James Swann. ‘Let’s tie up the final amounts,’ he said. ‘After that I’d like us to take a walk over the hill, just the two of us. We’ll get a different view from up there and develop an appetite for lunch while we’re at it.’

  In less than an hour they agreed the Contract Valuation was heading for 24% over tender price and responsibility rested with the Engineer, that is the Russell Partnership. Without it ever being said, all three present knew GR would have to go to the Client like Oliver Twist with his bowl pleading for more.

  He seemed unperturbed.

  The two men in their expensive suits and coats laboured up and along the wayleave fence where the pipelaying gang in their wet rags had laboured previously, the same mud dragging at their feet and the same cold air cutting into their lungs.

  GR was a fit man in his sixties. Nonetheless James could have climbed away from him on this slope being fitter still and only in his forties. He would have done if GR hadn’t disarmed him with his ready acceptance of responsibility and costs. Instead there were the beginnings of some other relationship and the impression of something noble in the older man. For Sir Graham Russell he felt a range of emotions that somehow embarrassed him but that also warmed and attracted him.

  GR stopped three-quarters of the way up and together they looked along the strath and down to Allan’s hut and the village and the mist softened hills beyond, their outline lost to the clouds and distant rain. Without comment each noted work continuing on the Struie Pumping Station and how the pipeline excavation beside the road was so straight and well finished. When grass took its proper hold it would be all but invisible. Not so the pipeline on the hill. Here heavy rain had done its damage, taking the thin and broken topsoil down to the road as run-off, across the road and into the river.

  ‘It’s not good enough,’ James voluntered. ‘I’ll return the labour force in the spring if you’ll pay for the new topsoil. We must leave it better than this.’

  ‘You might not be in the area. There’s no guarantee you’ll win Lochdon.’

  ‘We’ll come back anyway. The other side is worse, being steeper. We’ll do that as well under the same agreement.’

  ‘These are good attitudes, James. They speak more of partnership than contract.’

  James silently noted their reaching out one to the other, their tacit agreements, as GR began to climb again. On the plateau they caught their breath and strode out along the line of the culvert. No water erosion here, the land was level and even although soft where Conn had completed his reinstatements. Grass seed and time would do the rest.

  ‘Good driver’, said GR. ‘But how is your GF?’

  ‘He’ll be off for at least a year. At his age, I don’t expect him back.’

  They reached the west side of the hill and looked down the scarred slope. Huge patches of topsoil were missing. Far below them the new Works neared completion. The Plant sub-contractor worked in the two completed tanks fixing scum boards and scrapers and in the Control House commissioning control panels and telemetry. Healey’s men laboured to them and beyond, at the shore, worked on the last pipeline that would carry the final, clean effluent from the Tanks on the ultimate leg of its journey to the sea. Man and machine had beaten a path between Works and shoreline through the long spiky grass that would soon spring up again and be as it had through time immeasurable.

  ‘The outfall will be last,’ said James, ‘although I would expect you to agree substantial completion before commissioning, when the tests are done on concrete structures and new plant. With the outfall complete we can turn on the pumps and hand over to the Authority four months early.’

  GR didn’t answer. Instead he breathed deep and gestured widely to indicate the Works, the oil rigs, the villages, the towns and cities to the south and across the sea.

  ‘All this,’ he said, ‘is most usually likened to a machine.’

  James took a step to one side to listen more carefully. GR’s moral intensity was so controlled it seemed a great heat was being focussed on his mind, the intense heat of a welding flame. He felt his internal defences, tempered and hardened by two decades of contractual exactitude, softening against his will.

  GR continued.

  ‘But to me it’s more like an organism, a single giant creature that has a life and that will eventually die but, until then, must work to lengthen the duration of its survival and the quality of its living. This means it must continually renew itself and that’s where we come in, we builders. This is how we are part of the great corpus. We’re its white corpuscles and a wound has appeared in our little part, James. It’s bleeding. You’ll understand I mean this matter of the tunnel. It was caused by human error and that error rests with me. You know I haven’t tried to hide or disguise that, far less shift the burden and blame to you. Just the same, it would have been more easily met and dealt with if there had been openness on your side. You should have pointed out our omission when you saw it and not planned a coup.’

  James focussed his gaze on the oil rigs.

  ‘You adhered to the letter of the contract, James, but you pressed down on the spirit. You should have trusted me.’

  James felt the ground move beneath his feet.

  ‘There’s only you and me here.’

  ‘It was a risk I couldn’t allow myself,’ said James. ‘I didn’t know what kind of man you are. The job was priced so keenly there was no way we could break so much as even. This way there was a chance.’

  ‘Think I don’t understand? Or that I don’t respect your risk-taking? What’s your projected profit margin now?’

  ‘4%.’

  ‘Take away that margin and your figure will be a match for the tender price plus stated contingencies plus the invisible contingencies we have stored away in the Report on Tenders.’

  ‘You have more tucked away than I thou
ght.’

  ‘Don’t feel cheated. It puts closure at least in sight.’

  ‘Perhaps we could compromise a bit more.’

  ‘We already have the beginnings of an understanding, James.’

  ‘That began with your preliminary remarks in Allan’s hut.’

  ‘I would say earlier, with an understanding Client. Perhaps we can go beyond compromise. James, you know we’re working to the 5th Edition. It’s an unforgiving document that doesn’t allow for civilised compromise and it’s taken us almost to arbitration. Neither of us wants that. All the Health and Safety failures come out, all the complaints, all the omissions. It’s desperately, usually embarrassingly, revealing.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The 7th Edition allows for new relationships between the likes of us.’

  ‘Partnering?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know the form of words it uses? I have them memorised. ‘‘… the parties to the Contract are provided with a co-operative form of contract that should prevent delays or give rise to additional costs …’’ Hear that, James? It means the parties form a team and work together in harmony. It’s all about predictive thought and it’s the future calling to us. No more conflict. No more claims. A study in America showed that 80% of our time is spent in conflict. At a stroke it will be freed.’

  James couldn’t see his way through this. He felt confused while GR came across as timeless, a rock solid presence in contract and law.

  ‘A living organism has to adapt in its ways if it is to survive.’

  ‘I can learn.’

  ‘Allan is a clean slate. So, I think, is your Trevor. They could pioneer this method for us. These are interesting ideas, James.’

  ‘I’d like more detail.’

  ‘Detail is exactly what can’t be provided. That has to be worked out in the course of a co-operative project, especially with regard to cost. My proposal to you is as follows. You give us a price for the road items we have in the Lochdon Contract and we apply them retrospectively to Ness and Struie. Can do?’

  ‘Of course, but it will cost me what I can’t afford. We can’t do this job for nothing.’

  ‘Then we take the Ness and Struie prices and increase them by a small percentage for inflation and, frankly, in a non-competitive environment, more realism, and apply them forward into the Lochdon document. This will take care of that 4% and a little more beside although your return will be projected into the future. When the fourth and final Contract is ready, provided the work on Lochdon has gone well, even more so if the rate of improvement between the Black Isle job and here is continued, we award the fourth Contract to you on the same negotiated basis. All you have to do is persuade your Board to proceed to the 7th Edition retrospectively.’

  ‘And the Client?’

  ‘The Client will agree.’

  ‘This is the new way?’

  ‘When the Conditions change everything changes with them. That’s how foundational they are. It’s not just a new way, it’s a new morality. The partnering will go far beyond Contractor and Client and Engineer to include the public. What’s good for them is good for the Client and, through the Client, good for us.’

  ‘You don’t have to give other Contractors a chance?’

  ‘That’s the Client’s responsibility. I only recommend, but this way we give the Contractor continuity of employment. That means experience gained in the field isn’t lost from project to project. The Client retains the advantage of the first competitive tender but only has to go through that expensive and time consuming process once. Most of all it takes conflict out of our relations, yours and mine, Contractor and Engineer, and that’s a money saver in itself. After the fourth job is complete you, the Contractor, are known well and in pole position for whatever comes next.’

  ‘You’re asking us to take the hit on Ness and Struie knowing the loss will come back to us over the next two jobs? You’re saying it will not only even out but we’ll gain in time? I don’t know if I can take that hit.’

  ‘A working job on the ground when we’re done, a reasonable price for the Client, a reasonable profit for you, gained experience, a better, more assured future, our common ends are the only salient facts. It becomes a sort of marriage. Allan and Trevor will face the unexpected as it appears, as it always does, working out the financial implications as they go.’

  ‘And you, GR? What do you get?’

  ‘No more surprises. In the short term we’re saved the embarrassment of asking for more. Longer term? Having learned and honed the new skills we can take them elsewhere. Experience gained we can go anywhere within the reach of our new Bible.’

  James Swann looked north in the direction of Lochdon, just out of sight, and beyond. He looked south and eastwards to the great organism that required perpetual renewal as it grew. Finally he looked outwards to the oil rigs that pumped its heart’s blood.

  ‘And you can begin right away, James. You can move your staff and your men on to the new job now with all the benefits of a smooth and easy transition and no downtime or forced layoffs. What do you say?’

  James felt the weight not of only of his life’s experience weighing against this but also the morality of their old Bible. In his head he cast around for anything fundamental that might be destroyed. GR nodded down at the new Works and along the coast.

  ‘All it really means is that the final word on methods and material sources will be with the Engineer, in this case me, as it already is on strategy and procurement. It’s more a matter of trust than of money.’

  James Swann believed he could perhaps trust.

  ‘In moral terms, think of it as the New Testament growing from the Old. Completing it rather than replacing it.’

  ‘An assured profit on our expenditure?’

  ‘Just agree and all this can be yours.’

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes and grasped each other’s hands and arms and for a moment embraced. There was no one there to see it, unless the sheep are counted, but opponents as they had been under the old contract they now looked more like a single creature joined at hand and arm, and in their minds’ purpose as one under those Conditions that were the principal tool of their trade, seldom used but ultimate with the force of law and morality and, when brought into play, absolute in their dictum.

  17

  Extract from the Final Valuation Report

  The Ness and Struie Drainage Project may be considered substantially complete when the Ness and Struie Pumping Stations are commissioned, even before the Treatment Plant comes into operation. Permanent plant, such as that within the settlement tanks, will be in place and functional by the end of the month. At time of writing only the sea outfall remains to be completed of the critical path works.

  All pipelines have passed their prescribed tests and all concrete samples have similarly achieved both their seven and twenty-eight day strengths. Water retaining structures (high culvert, collection chamber, pumping stations and settlement tanks) have also been proven. In the course of construction one serious but non-fatal industrial accident occurred. The Health and Safety Executive has now completed its investigation and it is possible that a prosecution will follow against personnel. The Contractor has been cleared of responsibility.

  * * *

  Unusually wet weather for much of the contract duration has made surface finishing on the slopes between the two villages impossible and the Contractor will return in the spring to make good. The Client will recall that in the Partnership’s Feasibility Report the Engineer did suggest such a likelihood but a single Works, with concomitant operational savings, was deemed the more economic solution by the Authority over an anticipated forty year working life. Some additional costs will be generated but these may be legitimately ascribed (see below) to the forthcoming Lochdon Project and contracts beyond.

  * * *

  The Contractor has undergone substantial organisational and operational changes between completion of the Black Isle (Beauly Firth) Project and the
present time. Nonetheless, a substantial time saving (half of the allotted duration) has been achieved. This, it should be noted, in the early part of the year when the productive working day is shortest and in this winter’s particularly inclement conditions. Meteorological references indicate the wettest January of the past fifteen years and some of the lowest temperatures.

  The Engineer has been impressed by the Contractor’s progress not only with regard to the speedy completion of the Works but also in his internal reorganisations. Experience gained, working relationships developed with the Environmental Agency, the Roads Department, the Engineer’s staff and with the client body itself, are deemed invaluable to the successful completion of the two remaining projects. After discussions with senior personnel within the client body it has been agreed that the Lochdon Project will be constructed under a partnering arrangement as prescribed in the 7th Edition of the Conditions of Contract. It is recommended that Ness and Struie rates be applied with an upward revision of 6%.

  * * *

  In the interests of fairness it is also recommended that the Ness and Struie Contract be included in the new partnering arrangement and the revised rates applied retrospectively. This will allow for additional costs generated by the Contractor’s spring revisit and one or two other minor matters. All these developments will conform to the recommendations of the Latham Review and the procurement initiatives propounded by the Egan Report.

  With these acceptances in place the Contractor may effect a virtually seamless transition to Lochdon with financial savings passed on to the Client as well as the speediest possible addressing of local difficulties as required by the Environmental Agency. A start within the present calendar month will deflect the possibility of a punitive fine to the Client being applied by the Environmental Agency.