BAM Nuttall faces legal action as Cambridgeshire Busway row resurfaces
20 Jul, 2020 By Rob Horgan
BAM Nuttall is facing a second round of legal action after a decade-long row over the Cambridgeshire Busway resurfaced.
The council is looking to reclaim more than half of the £150M construction costs paid almost a decade ago.
In a similar case, brought in 2014, the council received £36M in an out of court settlement after perusing compensation for construction errors and delays.
This time around, the council is looking to claim a further £80M to correct identified defects and to recoup the cost of repairs already made.
The 25.7km Cambridgeshire Busway connects Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives and is the longest guided busway in the world.
Alleged defects outlined in the council’s High Court claim include "inappropriate infiltration drainage design", missing and incorrect information in maintenance manuals and the provision of dirty and contaminated concrete beam moulds.
The council also claims that there were “errors” in BAM Nuttal’s work on the busway’s foundations. It is alleged that BAM Nuttal had not factored in "the expected movements of the foundation" and has offered “no adequate justification” for the depth of the foundations.
A Cambridgeshire County Council spokesperson said: “We have lodged a formal claim with the court and are proceeding with legal action against BAM Nuttall. The claim is for the cost to repair defects on the Guided Busway. This follows a thorough review and advice from external legal and technical experts, who have assessed the work and the contract.
“BAM Nuttall are defending the claim and if this continues the claim will have to be heard by the courts and a potential trial is unlikely to be until the end of 2021 or possibly 2022.”
A spokesperson for BAM Nuttal added: “Since the Busway opened in 2011 passenger numbers have grown 47%. The busway is a fantastic piece of transport infrastructure which has performed consistently and reliably.
“In the six years since the Council’s consultants alleged that the Busway would need hundreds of interventions each month, this has not come to pass. The engineering evidence shows that it will not come to pass in the future.”
The spokesperson added: “BAM has long sought to work with the Council to address its concerns. We’ve assured the Council, on many occasions, that anything wrong with the busway design, for which BAM Nuttall is responsible, we’ll put it right
“It’s disappointing that the Council is progressing the matter through litigation in the High Court. Our next step is to explore the details of Cambridge County Council’s claim. BAM is confident that we’ll demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the Court that the design of the busway is not fundamentally defective and doesn’t require the remedial works, which the Council claims.”
The busway missed its original opening date in 2009, and the council charged Bam Nuttall a daily £14,000 fee for late delivery.
After a number of attempts, the scheme was finally handed over in May 2011. The council brought in Jackson Civil Engineering to complete additional work on the busway before it was finally commissioned in August 2011.
BAM als MELKKOE