At last the Glen of the Downs dual carriageway is ready to open. Liam Reid reports on a catalogue of bad luck and bad planning
It is unlikely that many of the people in the 30,000 cars making their way through the Glen of the Downs roadworks each day for the past three years noticed a small marsh along the route. If they did, they may by now also have spotted that it has gone. It hasn't been destroyed, however. Instead, the marsh has been removed, sod by sod, and replanted 400 metres away. The process took months, and it was hugely expensive.
It is just one of the many bizarre factors that has made the Co Wicklow project the most delayed and over-budget road scheme in Ireland. On Thursday the road should finally be fully open, nearly a year after its final estimated completion date and at nearly double the original projected cost. Its construction has caused untold misery, delaying commuters for up to an hour as they crawled through the five and a half kilometre site, south of Bray.
Politicians and officials are stoutly defending the project, blaming its problems on everything from the weather to people "hanging from trees". What is emerging, however, is a story of a motorway contract altered thousands of times as unforeseen difficulties arose, coupled with what descended into a bureaucratic war.
At last weekend's Fianna Fáil ardfheis the Taoiseach suggested that eco-warriors, or people hanging from trees, as he put it, were behind the delay and extra costs. But people hanging from trees are only a small part of the tortuous saga of the road.
Originally conceived in the late 1980s, the plan was to upgrade the N11 south of Bray, between Kilmacanogue and a new bypass for Newtownmountkennedy, to a dual carriageway. This included a stretch through the picturesque Glen of the Downs, one of the country's last natural oak woods.
The scheme was approved by the government in 1993, but it immediately hit a problem in the form of concerns at Dúchas, the Heritage Service. The glen was a national park, and the road as designed would seriously damage the environment. The engineers had to rethink their plans, which Dúchas then accepted.
In 1997, as Wicklow County Council was preparing to put the project out to tender, it emerged that 300 trees would still have to be felled to make way for the upgraded road. In September that year eco-warriors took up residence in their branches, bringing work to a halt. The phenomenon of the eco-warrior had recently emerged in Britain, where environmentalists had physically blocked big infrastructural projects.
The Irish group stayed put until late 1999, mounting a legal challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court before it failed.
By then the contract had been awarded to Ascon, a civil-engineering firm. Work finally got under way in June 2000. It was due to take two and a half years and cost just under €50 million.
Then the project became bogged down in a low-level bureaucratic war. No fewer than 20,000 letters were sent between the contractor and Wicklow County Council. Most of them concerned variations to the contract as unforeseen problems and complications arose.
This is perhaps the key to the problems on the site. Under the contract between Ascon and the council, the contractor was to undertake specific work for a specific fee. Any work not explicitly outlined in the contract could constitute an extra cost, for which Ascon could invoice the council. Delays because of unplanned developments could also add to the bill.
Most of the letters concern this issue. Whenever Ascon discovered what it regarded as new work it put the details in writing and sent them with photographs to the council, whose engineers then had to approve the work in writing. Ascon also invoiced extra for this work, deeming much of it to be outside the original contract.
The council and Ascon now seriously disagree about the terms of the contract, with the local authority seeking to reject many of the firm's additional invoices. The disagreement is so great that it is understood both sides may yet end up in the High Court.
The delays were not helped by the fact that most of the building took place in normal working hours. Many contractors work seven days a week on road-building projects, but this was not the case at Glen of the Downs, where late working was also unusual.
The contract provided no deadline incentive for the contractor to work outside regular hours.
In addition many substantial and therefore costly aspects of the project seem not to have been anticipated. The first was a water mains that had to be replaced in awkward sections, because of the traffic passing through the site each day. Neither the scale nor the logistical complexity of the work seems to have been provided for in the original contract.
A second significant issue was environmental work. Because of complaints to the European Commission - and, perhaps, simply because of the publicity created by the eco-warriors - environmentally friendly changes had to be tacked on to the scheme, including the moving of the marsh.
In another change, nine culverts, or tunnels, were built to facilitate the fish in a river that was thought to have dried up but was found to have come back to life. The culverts - heavily designed and lighted underground tunnels - now run under the road to facilitate the fish.
And one of the complaints to the EU meant a significant amount had to be spent stopping soil erosion on a cutting in the side of a hillock. "Earth nails" had to be used to hold the soil together, along with "grout socks" to prevent it from becoming contaminated. Then a mesh of pockets, laid over the top, had to be filled by hand. Again it took months.
Progress was further compounded by poor weather, the road flooded several times, with substantial delays - although other road projects do not appear to have been delayed by Ireland's climate.
The National Roads Authority, which is ultimately responsible for the project, rejects suggestions that the problems should have been foreseen. A significant part of the scheme's increased cost can be attributed to construction-industry inflation, which has been running at between 10 and 15 per cent a year since 1999, according to Michael Egan of the authority. He says the eco-warriors were responsible for the first delay and, therefore, the first year's inflation.
He also points out that the project was extremely unusual. "We went through a nature reserve. It's not your everyday road scheme." Egan says the extra environmental work was done in case the European Commission intervened, halting the contract or imposing huge fines for environmental damage.
"That's the price. Had we not done [the extra works] there was the possibility of the European Commission taking some form of direct action against the scheme. A call had to be made on it."
According to Egan, the contract was further complicated by the fact that the road, one of the busiest in the country with 30,000 cars passing through every day, had to be kept open. It meant the extra work took longer, and costs rose.
He also points out that 60 archaeological sites were uncovered during the build.
Minister for Transport, Seamus Brennan, who has ordered an independent review of the reasons for the time and budget overruns, says lessons have already been learned.
"I think we've shown that you're better to build a fresh road," he says. "It's clearly much more expensive to upgrade an existing one."
The final cost of the road, at almost €15 million a kilometre, is comparable with that of a motorway, which costs between €10 million and €20 million a kilometre. "Under the original cost of €49 million it would have been €8 million [a kilometre\]," he says. "I don't know of any road in the whole system that was built for that price."
He and the National Roads Authority both say the wording of construction contracts has been changed toprotect against significant overruns in the future.
The contract for the glen, they say, was merely to build the road to a specific design. The State took on all of the design and construction risk, with contractors able to claim for any works not stated in the contract. The contract may also have left the contractor with no incentive to keep costs down and ensure the job was completed in as short a time as possible.
Egan says this type of contract also explains the "exceptional" number of letters between Ascon and Wicklow County Council. And he agrees with the Minister that there are lessons to be learned.
In future contractors will have to take on both the design and the construction - along, therefore, with most of the risk. This type of contract is more expensive, as the contractor must anticipate and be able to fund the resolution of any problems, but it provides greater financial certainty.
It also gives contractors incentives to finish on time. Not least among them is a rule that allows contractors to reclaim additional costs only in exceptional circumstances. Another is a lane-rental system for road-upgrade schemes. A contractor that exceeds the time allotted for a project will be fined for occupying parts of a road that are meant to be open to traffic.
Brennan hopes his review will answer two questions. "Firstly, was the first price actually realistic? Secondly, what are the independently stated lessons to be learned from this?
"But we have to remind ourselves," he says, "that we were on time and on budget with 95 per cent of road projects. The Glen of the Downs was the exception to this rule."
When the upgraded road opens at the end of the week it will be one of the most environmentally sensitive ever built in Europe. It will, however, have been at the expense of creating one of the biggest traffic-jam blackspots Ireland has seen. Egan believes the disruption that upgrade projects cause has to be endured to address the country's "major infrastructural deficit".
He may not wish to use such a harsh phrase, but for the National Roads Authority it's a case of being unable to make an omelette with breaking eggs. We will have to wait until Thursday to see whether commuters feel the mess has been worth it.