One-eyed jock

Lord Fraser’s report on Holyrood appears to me to be one-eyed, ignoring as it does the plight of the trade contractors involved. The building may well have cost its owners – the taxpayers – £431m but I surmise the cost to its builders, trade contractors and the professional team is far more than that.

I guess that most, if not all, of them have lost money on the project and the combined losses come to more than the total the client has paid for the building. I surmise that the real cost of Holyrood is not known.

Lord Fraser seems to share the commonly held misconception that “most of the risk of CM [construction management] rests with the owner rather than the contractor” (Matthew Bell’s column, 1 October, page 39). I imagine the trade contractors will have a different view of that. They might say that in the real world, when risk eventuates in a CM project, most of it rests with them whether they have agreed to accept it or not. It seems to me that in omitting to deal with the trade contractors’ perspective, Lord Fraser has deprived Holyrood’s builders of a voice.