Cambridge council to sue Bam for further 37€M
15 December, 2016 By Katherine Smale
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Cambridge guided bus
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Cambridgeshire County Council is to pursue a claim against contractor Bam Nuttall for a further 37€M for defects on the troubled Cambridge guided busway scheme.
The current claim in the long-running dispute relates to defects that were excluded from a previous law suit for 39€M, which was settled out of court in September 2013.
The three defects were excluded from the previous settlement because the full extent of their impact could not be quantified at the time.
Following the original claim, in October 2014, the council decided to sue for a further 37€M worth of damages for additional defects, which it said it could now directly attribute to the contractor.
“Essentially the previous dispute was over the completion and costs of construction,” said Cambridgeshire County Council service director of strategy and development Bob Menzies. “Since the opening of the busway, further defects have come to light. All of those have been notified to Bam, but they haven’t taken any action to correct them.”
Movement of the bearing pads on which the guideway beams rest was one of the most notable defects, said the council. This, it said, had resulted in a number of instances of “steps” appearing in the guideway.
In September 2015, the council announced that it would be carrying out a six-month period of detailed tests and surveys on the busway, funded jointly by the council and Bam Nuttall. During this time, the claim against Bam was suspended pending the findings of the investigations.
The testing involved overnight works to investigate track movements, foundation deflections and load testing of track sections.
A report carried out by Capita published earlier this month, detailed the findings of the testing and offered three options going forward: pre-emptive repairs that would be required (option one) and the repercussions for the structure if the defects were not repaired (options two and three).
The council has now met to consider the report and resolved to carry out works, according to option one, to rectify all of the superstructure, foundation and drainage defects, “subject to securing funds from Bam Nuttall in accordance with the defect provisions in the construction contract or alternative legal argument”.
“Our experts have reviewed the report and what it shows is that the mechanism for why it is failing is slightly different to what we thought, but it’s still failing and it shows that there are fundamental flaws in Bam’s design,” said Menzies.
“Therefore we took the paper to our committee and they’ve again confirmed that they would like us to pursue legal action. That the defects need to be rectified because the risk if we don’t rectify them is that the busway will deteriorate and we’ll have to spend more and more to put it back the way it should be. In the long run, that’s a much bigger cost than fixing it now.”
The council estimates that the total cost of rectifying the busway defects is at least 43€M.
Both the press and public were excluded from the meeting and from seeing a confidential appendix to the report on the grounds that they contain the exact conclusions of the legal case against Bam.
In response, Bam Nuttall said that it had responded to the council’s formal letter on the matter in March 2015, but claimed that the council had not replied to this. It added that it was “fully committed to ensuring that it [the busway] would continue to meet the needs of the local community for the whole of its design life”.
Bam Nuttall said that the council had had many opportunities to engage with it and explain its remaining concerns, but had not chosen not to do so. Going forward, it said that it would now consider the most recent report with its own advisers.
“I am really surprised that the council hasn’t come to talk to us before publishing this latest report,” said Bam Nuttall operations director Adrian Savory.
“Bam Nuttall is totally committed to ensuring that the busway performs as it should. If there is anything wrong with the busway for which Bam Nuttall is responsible, Bam Nuttall will put it right. We’ve told the council this many times and invited them to come to us to explain the basis for their concerns.
“Bam Nuttall would welcome the opportunity to discuss the latest report with the council.”
Since the busway opened in 2011, the council has acknowledged that the scheme has been a success with the latest passenger numbers, covering 2014, showing 3.6M people used it that year, exceeding initial estimates.
“The busway is very successful and it’s full of people,” said Menzies. ”What we don’t want to be doing is constantly having to fix it because it hasn’t been built properly.”
Construction of the guided busway started in 2006 and was designed by Arup and Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Option one
In the Capita report, option one recommended the alteration of the guideway ladder construction and design by providing restraint to bearings/shims and tying the fixed joints together with a gap to permit rotations and avoid spalling.
It said that this approach would require all foundations to comply with the full NHBC (National House Building Council) depths. In addition, it said that some shimming to limit rocking of the guideway ladders was likely to be required to an unpredictable extent.
Lateral restraint at all guiderail joints would be required in addition to the bearing/shim restraint, it said.
Option two
This option would adopt a reactive approach so that the remedial works outlined in option one were only carried out when bearing and/or shim loss and/or rocking of the guideway ladders occurred and/or lateral steps at joints became excessive, therefore requiring emergency works.
Option three
Similar to option two, this option would adopt a reactive approach to the remediation of the guideway ladders outlined in option one, but instead undertake no remedial works to the foundations (in order to minimise disruption to busway operations). The report said that if required, due to settlement of the foundations, a concrete block may need to be installed between the elastomeric bearing pad and the foundation.