SCANDAL MOUNTS AT NATIONALISED SHIPYARD
Three years lost, £1.3m of taxpayers money wasted and only now is ScotGov trying to figure out how to turn around nationalised shipyard Ferguson Marine
IF you acquire a new business which had been failing under its previous management, there are a number of steps you would take. You draw up a strategic plan. By doing this you develop short-term goals: quarterly, semi-annual, or annual. And the new strategic plan will help you reach those goals. You could be forgiven for thinking this is all exceedingly obvious stuff, but apparently not for the Scottish Government.
The Scottish Government nationalised Fergusson Marine in August 2019, the goal was to rescue the last ship builder on the lower Clyde. Yet, the subsequent three years is a catalogue of impressive incompetence and mismanagement.
There is precious little evidence of any planning to consider resources that may have been needed. Cash, people, equipment, inventory, and additional operating costs.
Nor is there much sign of any overview of deployment of existing resources, in terms of efficiency and productivity. All of which - having taken over a failing business - you would imagine are steps the SNP would undertake. If for no other reason than to ensure the end result will be a service or product that customers are actually looking for.
These are the metrics you would expect anyone approaching basic competency would use to monitor progress towards attaining the goal: namely returning the shipyard to competitive profitability and a sustainable business model.
But revelations reveal a Scottish Government that has completely failed to properly prosecute any of these measures. We already know for example that the taxpayers spent £1.3m for 454 days' work on ‘turnaround director’ Tim Hair1. The end result? The £2800-a-day chief failed to win any orders in over two years, but did succeed in personally pocketing that £1.3m.
Yet the picture forming reveals more than very tangible incompetence by the Scottish Government relating to the Ferguson Marine shipyard. This goes beyond a case of splashing other peoples cash on failed strategic planning or ‘turnaround directors’. In fact, Nicola Sturgeon’s government has just now announced they are bringing in a consultancy firm directed to tell them how to turn around a scandal hit ferry shipyard2.
The fact that they are doing this sort of planning only now, having dished out £1.3m to Mr Hair suggests to me that Ms Sturgeon’s government has had little or no clue about how to actually rescue the shipyard for the last three years.
What sort of normal company would buy a business then wait three years before thinking about how to make it profitable? But this is precisely what the SNP led government in Holyrood has done. They nationalise a failing shipyard, fail to undertake any sort of strategic planning as the new owners. Instead, the First Minister simply outsourced the whole task to a ‘turnaround director’ who grabbed £1.3m of taxpayers money, who failed to achieve anything before dashing for the exit.
And only after three years of that sort of ineptitude - only now - is Ms Sturgeon’s government turning its mind to trying to figure out how they should actually go about rescuing the shipyard.
Amazingly, the new contract is tasking ‘HaskoningDHV UK Ltd’ with
“Clarification of the target productivity, target product mix and planned shipbuilding strategy of the yard”3
You may imagine that something like clarifying target productivity or a ‘planned shipbuilding strategy of the yard’ really ought to have already happened after three years. But no, the SNP are only getting around to it now - after having spaffed £1.3m up the wall on Mr Hair who failed to land any new contracts.
But is it little wonder Mr Hair failed? After all, ScotGov had not even started to identify:
“measures that, if executed, will improve efficiency and competitiveness in relation to comparator shipyards”4
That’s right, the Scottish Government is only now turning its collective mind to considerations like measures to improve efficiency. That they spent so much money on a ‘turnaround director’ who failed to turn anything around is bad enough. That they hired such a chap, before even figuring out productivity targets, planned shipbuilding strategies or efficiency measures is breath-taking.
But the pièce de résistance in this utter farce is how much it has all cost. You see, that £1.3m for 454 days work by Mr Hair is not the total. Having wasted three years and all that money on Tim Hair, the new consultation contract adds yet more bills for taxpayers to foot.
HaskoningDHV UK Ltd is getting handed £212,544.00 (value excluding VAT) to do the basics that should have been undertaken more than three years ago.
After years of taxpayers money being chucked down the drain, having completely failed to undertake basic measures to provide new strategic management - the Scottish Government has decided they really ought to
“commission a report to identify potential ways to improve the competitiveness of the shipyard in support of its sustainable future.”5
Three years. £1.3m spent. Another £212,544.00 handed out. Only now is Nicola Sturgeon’s government getting around to figuring out ways to improve competitiveness of the shipyard.
It is reported that Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince of Talleyrand, once observed of the Royal Bourbons, “Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublié” - they have learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing. As attributed quotations go, it comes close to Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Having reviewed the Scottish Government, its mishandling of the Ferguson shipyard and the voters repeatedly returning them all to office in Holyrood, it’s hard to avoid feeling Talleyrand & Einstein’s witticisms fit Ms Sturgeon like a glove.
Electing an utterly hapless administration time and again, only to be constantly surprised at the continuing policy failure is insanity. But one too many people seem hell-bent on persisting with in the name of ‘the cause’ of scexit. Furthermore, if the whole fiasco of the lower Clyde shipyard is anything to go by, the SNP have learnt nothing. And judging by the fire and fury recently displayed at the suggestion Ms Sturgeon is an attention seeker, they’re likely to forget nothing. After all, nursing cold grievances is what nationalism insists upon.
Pity about the mounting losses to taxpayers amid the Ferguson Marine fiasco. But this SNP administration increasingly reminds me of a tawdry hommage to the Bourbon kings of Versailles. Just the other day, Nicola Sturgeon informed Iain Dale of LBC that “saying I should be ignored is effectively saying Scotland should be ignored”.
l’État, c’est moi, premier ministre?
Williams, Martin (2022, 26 June), ‘Nationalised Ferguson Marine under £2800-a-day chief fails to win any orders in over two years’, The Herald, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/20234708.nationalised-ferguson-marine-2800-a-day-chief-fails-win-orders-two-years/
Forbes, Ellie (2022, 10 August), ‘Scottish Government to pay over £200k to Dutch firm to turn around scandal-hit Ferguson Marine’, The Scotsman, https://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/scottish-government-to-pay-over-ps200k-to-dutch-firm-to-turn-around-scandal-hit-ferguson-marine-3800483
HaskoningDHV UK Ltd contract award notice, https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/search_view.aspx?ID=AUG455838
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I listened to an academic some time ago discussing his research into Mao support clubs which (still) proliferate in Mao’s home province of Hunan.The one and only (20m deaths later)criticism they all shared was the fact of his ideological stupidity in putting all the factories into incompetent and inexperienced hands.There is less excuse for SNP ‘s manifest idiocy in the 21st c but it does seem like something from Alice in Wonderland “I’ve said it once.I’ve said it twice and therefore it is true”Government by wishful thinking?