EXCLUSIVE

THURROCK Council have thrown a veil of silence and secrecy over more than £4 million paid to a consultancy firm who have worked on the botched and much-delayed A13 widening and Stanford-le-Hope rail station projects.

Aecom is a global infrastructure consulting company based in Los Angeles and has an office in London, from where the company has worked on some major projects including the DP World London Gateway port on the site of the former Shell refinery at Corringham and it also had involvement on the Tilbury2 port project.

It was the agency that developed the preliminary design of the A13 widening scheme and went on the council's regular payroll of bills in March 2016 when the scheme was in its infancy.

By the end of 2016 Aecom had been paid more than £2 million pounds.

In recent months has the project has been revaluated by the council after cost and time overruns put the whole project sharply in focus. The council brought in a specialist, experienced officer to become assistant director of transport infrastructure on a salary of more than £100,000.

In a briefing to councillors in July last year the assistant director, Anna Eastgate told members of the transport overview and scrutiny committee there had been many mistakes in the early planning with key elements missed out of the design brief.

Those missing elements included drainage and utilities work and added millions to the overall predicted cost of the A13 project. The budget for the project laid down in 2016 was £79 million with a finish date in 2020. Currently the cost is estimated to be more than £114 million and at a recent transport overview and scrutiny committee members were told it is likely the cost will rise further and the project may not be finished until March next year.

In July Ms Eastgate outlined the background to the financial calamity, explaining a mixture of poor decision-making and failing to anticipate problems and that the project had been pulled together 'outside recognised construction sector contract guidelines' which had led to the problems she described as 'compensation issues'.

She focused on the fact that the project had been split into two sections and contracts – design and construction. She made no mention of Aecom and its role – nor did she disclose that another consultancy, Mace Ltd (who she had formerly worked for) had been brought in by the council to work on both projects as well, at a cost approaching another three quarters of a million pounds.

At that July meeting Cllr Alex Anderson asked: "Is there an audit trail going back to 2016. Who made these decisions relating to split between the design and the build?

He was told: "In 2016 two reports went to cabinet in March and December. The first went for tenders for a design a further report and the cabinet delegated to the then corporate director of environment and place. The contracts were awarded based on Highways England's collaborative delivery framework.

"There wasn't sufficient time to create a single design and build contract, that was the only credible decision because they had to start spending the funding or lose it."

Cllr Anderson responded to Ms Eastgate by saying: "Are you telling me you don't really know?" and got the answer "Unfortunately the people making those decisions are no longer here."

That will soon be the case regarding Ms Eastgate – who is about to leave the council and take up a director's job at neighbouring Southend Council.

While all the delays have been ongoing, the payments have continued to be rolled out to Aecom. They have been paid by the Corporate Services and Place departments at the council for 'construction, professional/legal and consultancy services'. Around £17,000 of the money was paid to 'third parties'.

In 2017 they pocketed another £293,581.32 and in 2018 were paid £319,149.31. Even when serious doubts about the project and the quality of the planning work and accountability, Aecom have continued to draw the cash. 2019 saw them paid £461,462.74 and Thurrock Nub News again flagged up the shambles that was occurring. And by the end of last month another £1,161,269.84 had gone into their coffers.

Last week the fingerprints of Aecom were seen to be on the Stanford rail station project for the first time when designs for the 'stage two' car park and transport hub' project were presented to the transport overview and scrutiny committee, even though the presentation left more questions unanswered than answered and – two days later – led to members of the council's planning committee refusing to sanction planning permission for 'stage one', the rail station itself, until they were briefed on the second stage and its financial and engineering veracity was proved.

Which led Thurrock Nub News to ask the council exactly what the authority had got for its near £5 million total payment to Aecom and Mace.

Not for the first time, to both questions from Nub News and elected councillors sitting on appropriate committees, the council declined to answer, issuing the following terse 11 word statement: "This information is commercially sensitive. Appropriate procurement procedures have been followed."

Also see: Council finally acknowledges blunders.

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