Forth Road Bridge repairs "shelved five years ago"
Plans to replace parts of the Forth Road Bridge - including the area containing the defect which caused the December closure - were shelved five years ago because of Scottish Government funding cuts, MSPs have been told.
Former bridgemaster Barry Colford said the replacement of the truss end links on the bridge was part of a capital programme of works which engineers believed was needed in our professional opinion''.
He was giving evidence to Holyrood's Infrastructure Committee alongside several other witnesses from the Forth Estuary Transport Authority (Feta), the body which managed the bridge until last year.
The committee was told that the removal of bridge tolls in 2008 and budget cuts in the 2011 spending review had impacted on Feta's capital budget.
Former convener Lesley Hinds said that spending review had resulted in a 58% cut to the organisation's capital plan, meaning that a reprioritisation exercise'' had to be undertaken.
As a result of this, the 2010/11 plan to replace the truss end links at a cost of £10-15 million did not go ahead.
The committee previously heard that a seized pin had caused the crack which led to the shutdown of the bridge for almost three weeks in December.
Mr Colford said that while he did not believe the seizure of the pin was foreseeable'', and it was not the primary reason for the planned truss end links work, that work would have seen the pins replaced anyway. He said:The pins were always a concern, not just for myself, but also for my predecessors.''
But he added: There was no sign of excess wear on the pin...there was nothing to say that the pin wasn't performing, and there was nothing in the inspection to say that there were any outward signs of distress on the adjacent members.''
Mr Colford said the pin was not a good detail'' though, because it was not easy to inspect or lubricate.These things were part of our thinking when we were looking to replace the whole truss end links back in 2010/11,'' he said.
Asked about the scrapping of the replacement plan, Mr Colford said: Obviously finances come into that.Post-tolling we were in the slightly anomalous position of Feta having the governance of the bridge but the funding came from a third party.''
He said Feta needed to reprioritise'' its plans, and did so with the safety of users and staff as its first concern.
Labour MSP Dave Stewart asked: If work had been carried out, might this have avoided the bridge closing last year?''
Mr Colford replied: Well, 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.''
He added: We made the decision (not to go ahead) but the decision was made because of the spending review.''
Ms Hinds told the committee: I personally, and I am sure a few other people, have been quite upset about the headlines regarding Feta.
On the one hand we are being blamed for not carrying out work on the truss end links five years ago, e0ven though we did not make the cut in the funding.
On the other hand, this failure is nothing to do with that work - it is not where the fault occurred. It can't be both.''
She also suggested that the decision to remove the tolls on the bridge in 2008 wasn't thought through''.
The money (to maintain the bridge) had to come from somewhere, and it had to come from Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government,'' she said.