Audit Scotland tenders for consultant to help it find reasons for parliament's disastrous cost overrun.
Audit Scotland, the Scottish parliament's spending watchdog, is seeking consultants to help it draw up a report on the £400m Scottish parliament building.

The body put out a tender in the European Union's Official Journal last month for a consultant to examine the Holyrood project. The notice said it had an "urgent need" to make an appoint by December.

The tender notice said: "Our examination will concern project management and the reasons for the cost increases and slippage that have affected the Holyrood project over the past three years."

It said that the consultant would assist with a detailed investigation and strategic assessment of the overall management and value for money of the project.

The notice added that the consultant may need to provide similar services to the Fraser inquiry into cost overruns on the scheme, which is currently under way.

The report will be a follow-up to the first Audit Scotland inquiry, which was published in September 2000.

In a statement issued in September, auditor general Robert Black confirmed that a report would be written, and that his interim findings would be published next summer.

He added: "I will keep an open mind on the exact timing of my report, depending on how events unfold."

The Fraser inquiry into the parliament's cost overrun heard evidence from two civil servants this week.

Alastair Wyllie, the head of the Scottish Office's building division in the late 1990s, and Robert Gordon, the civil servant who headed the constitution group that prepared the ground for devolution, were questioned by the inquiry's counsel John Campbell on Tuesday.

Wyllie told the inquiry that the cost of the parliament building was estimated by two QSs at the end of the 1997 and the beginning of 1998 at between £50m and £80m.

He said that the decision to give consultants a percentage fee was made in February 1998 by Bill Armstrong, the project adviser.

A date has yet to be set for the project team members to give evidence, although it is unlikely to take place this year.

The project team included Bovis Lend Lease as construction manager, Davis Langdon & Everest as QS and RMJM as architect.