Edinburgh Tram Inquiry To Look At Six Million Documents
The Edinburgh tram inquiry will examine about six million documents as part of its investigation into what went wrong with the over-budget and delayed project.
The scale of the inquiry was revealed at its first preliminary hearing in the capital.
Lord Hardie said the probe will not consider whether the project should have gone ahead or determine whether anyone is legally or financially liable.
It will provide recommendations to Scottish ministers on how failings can be avoided in future infrastructure projects.
The trams began operating at the end of May last year after six years of disruption and a long-running dispute between Edinburgh City Council and contractors.
The eventual cost of £776 million was more than double the sum earmarked for the project by the previous Labour-led administration.
The inquiry is looking at the project, examining its governance, management and other areas to try to find out why it was delayed, and why it ''cost considerably more than originally budgeted for and delivered significantly less than was projected through reductions in scope''.
Lord Hardie said the inquiry will also look at the consequences of the failures.
He said the question of legal liability was excluded, including both civil and criminal.
This inquiry cannot determine whether anyone is guilty of an offence or is liable to pay damages to someone else,'' he said.
Having said that, others might choose to draw inferences about such matters from findings in fact made in the report submitted to Scottish ministers and based upon evidence evaluated by me.
I have a responsibility to ensure that the inquiry is carried out in an independent, fair and effective manner.
My obligations are to the public as a whole.''
The preliminary hearing was told the main organisations involved in the project said there could be up to 500 million relevant documents.
The inquiry team has narrowed this number down to six million, which are now being filtered by a document management system.