The road to nowhere

It says a lot about a job when both the people in charge of the firms building it say they wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole if they’d been in place at the time the deal was inked. We’re talking about the road to hell known as the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route. Carillion’s bosses reckon it helped send the firm under and the top dogs at the road’s remaining two builders, Balfour Beatty and Galliford Try, say they would have given it a massive swerve. It’s due to be finished this summer despite Balfour chief executive Leo Quinn admitting the pair have barely been able to lay any blacktop since the middle of December because of the appalling weather. My hack wondered whether the summer completion was still achievable. “Depends which hemisphere we’re talking about,” was Quinn’s wry reply.

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